ww 
sf 
Lain’ * 


x 
a 


ae 8 ee 


the 
(sth 


Sean) 


at wt <a 


i 
meee 


Sate arate 
Ae eS 
Paka 


= 
WAS 
3 


ay 


aL 
See 


a 


es 


os 
ne 
fa 


3 


Sar 
TTS 
Serer 
a 


eS 


eS 


eas: 


ot, 


rt 


ah ; 
Ccerruiarn 


Rasa 


a oe 
esteaanaealy 
bres 


fel 


aa. 
ee 


“i 


at 


siigricrnteg 
Shinty 


hae 


as 


bat 
Sten 
4 


es 
oa aad 


tree! 
vit I 


iq if 
tol cae 4 
eae Se ieae 


ifs 
sate 
rate 
Aine 


h 
it ites i 


Sere 
Se: 


sy 
coe 8 


rs 
rote 


eae 


x 


: - 


A 


* 





Library of Che Theological Seminary 
PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 
DIKE 


PRESENTED BY 
Kenneth L. Maxwell 


——,. \ £ pod eRe 


7s fs\ «oo 
men | ) 
—w 





4 A i 
nae i 
a 


bt Ni ‘ ( 


: Mi chahh i 
(ats URN 
au 


Ue 


ay: 





J a\ a | 


a 


4 ye et ae 


eh, a PF! ? 

/ _ ‘ ete { ; 
arene 
_ i‘ 


4 
, 
® 





BUILDING UP 
THE MID-WEEK SERVICE 





WILLIAM L. STIDGER, pb.. 


By WILLIAM L. STIDGER 


BUILDING UP THE MID-WEEK. SERVICE 

BUILDING SERMONS WITH SYMPHONIC 
THEMES 

FINDING GOD IN BOOKS 

THAT GOD’Ss HOUSE MAY BE FILLED 

HENRY FORD: THE MAN AND HIS 
MOTIVES 

ADVENTURES IN HUMANITY 

THE PLACE OF BOOKS IN THE LIFE 
WE LIVE 

THERE ARE SERMONS IN BOOKS 

FLASHLIGHTS FROM THE SEVEN SEAS 

STANDING ROOM ONLY 

SYMPHONIC SERMONS 








NEw York: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


BUILDING UP THE 
MID-WEEK SERVICE 


BY» 


P 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER. D.D. 


NEW ws YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


BUILDING UP THE MID-WEEK SERVICE 
Pal 8 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


DEDICATED TO 
JACK MEREDITH 


My Associate Pastor in two Churches where we 
have worked out the ideas set forth in this book 


4% i 
a Lay 


Lt vit ie ay 
{ee 
AAI Abe eh fet } 
“SS OOS) ag 
St Na 
: 


Byrd 
Vy) ae! 
5 ae 


ia i "1 f 
MR 
ae wih 
May Dag he, 


eri 
att 
bape 


- 


aa 





CHAPTER 


VIII 


XII 


CONTENTS 


Just a Word to the Preachers of 
America } 


A New Way for the New Day . 

Let Us Give It a New Name 

Let Us Expect Much from That 
Sanctuary Service i 

The New Way of ena 
Through the Great Hymns 

The New Type of Personal Testi- 
mony 

Informality ne the M Bitieee 
Meeting and How to Produce 
It Rg REN eer 

Once a Month Feature Service 
for the Mid-Week Meeting 

Group Nights at the Mid-Week 
Meeting _ ..., 

The “Food, Faith op jain jee 
tures of the Mid-Week Meet- 
IIo wy! 

The Graded lpenures and the 
Educational Program 

Advertising This Remade M de 
Week Meeting. . 

Meeting a Real Need with ips 
Mid-W eek Service . he he 


Vii 


PAGE 


CRTs 4 


cm Sati} 


mh 
Oe 5 
7), eee 
| aS ‘ 





JUST A WORD TO THE PREACHERS 
OF AMERICA: 


What I want to say by way of introduction 
to this little book about the modern mid-week 
meeting is that I believe the Wednesday Serv- 
ice can be made the greatest service of the 
week in our churches if we take it seriously 
enough. 

I am convinced that the old type of Prayer 
Meeting is through, except in very isolated in- 
stances. We are in the midst of a new day 
and we must evolve a new way. 

You know and I know that the heart-break 
of the average preacher’s life is the so-called 
Prayer Meeting; the mid-week service. I suf- 
fered myself in trying to make it go in the old 
way. Then I decided to break loose from old 
traditions and try to build a service to fit the 
psychology, and the thinking and feeling of 
the new day. 

In two churches I failed miserably with my 


mid-week meetings; and in two churches I 
ix 


x A Word to Preachers 


have succeeded with this mid-week meeting. 
In St. Marks I had a chance to break away 
from the past and we built up a Prayer Meet- 
ing until it had an average attendance of 500. 
That has continued to grow until it is larger 
now, since I left that church, than it was when 
I was there, so that is evidence that the insti- 
tution which I established did not depend upon 
my personality to make it go. It was the 
method which carried the power. In my pres- 
ent church, during my first year we have built 
up a Prayer Hour, which we call the Sanctu- 
ary Service, until it has had, many times dur- 
ing the first year, an attendance of 1,000 peo- 
ple. When my preacher readers know that 
this church held its Prayer Meeting in one of 
the smallest rooms in the church with an aver- 
age attendance of about twenty, with now and 
then fifty present on a special occasion, they 
will understand that a jump from even fifty 
to 1,000 is a proof that the methods which I 
set forth in this book will work. They are 
pragmatic. They will work in any type of a 
church, large or small; in village or town or 
city. 

The urge to write this book has been coming 


A Word to Preachers Xl 


to me from various sources. I have hundreds 
of letters asking me to write a book on “The 
Church Night,” or “The Family Night Meet- 
ing.” These letters come nearly every week 
due to the fact that I am writing continuously 
for such preacher magazines as “Church 
Management,” “The Homiletic Review,” and 
“The Expositor.” 

I have among my friends the traveling 
salesmen for several large publishing houses 
who sell to the religious trade. These men, 
whenever I meet them and we talk books, say: 
“Why don’t you write a book about your mid- 
week Prayer Meeting? We have constant de- 
mands for such a book.” 

Letters are constantly pouring into the re- 
ligious book stores asking for such a book. 

I have never written a book which I have en- 
joyed more than the one which follows this 
Introduction. It was written without inter- 
ruption. This is the first book since “Soldier 
Silhouettes” which I have had the pleasure of 
writing in that fashion. It is a satisfaction to 
send forth a book when your heart is running 
over with its ideas and its mission. When 
one feels that he actually has something that 


Xil A Word to Preachers 


will be a help to other preachers there is joy in 
writing. 

In that spirit I have set down the facts of 
this book. I do not care for it to have literary 
value. I do want it to have feeling as well as 
method. I believe that it has. My greatest 
reward will be the reward of knowing that it 
has helped preachers to break away from the 
old Prayer Meeting traditions into a new and 
a living Sanctuary Service. That service will 
lose none of its spiritual values, I hope. Indeed 
it ought to be even more intensely full of the 
spirit of prayer than the old type of a Prayer 
Meeting. It will have young and old present. 

My conviction is that, if for no other reason 
than that it did not attract the young people, 
the so-called old-fashioned Prayer Meeting was 
long ago doomed to die. It was essentially 
selfish. 

This new Sanctuary Service may become 
intensely spiritual and immensely practical. It 
is groomed to meet a need of to-day. It will 
meet that need, as is evidenced by the fact that 
everywhere it is being tried it is doubling, and 
tripling, the attendance. I have hundreds of 
letters from preachers who have re-made 


A Word to Preachers Xili 


their mid-week meetings over these patterns, 
until they are holding their Sanctuary Serv- 
ices in the main auditorium of their churches 
instead of in the smallest rooms in these 
churches. 





BUILDING UP | 
THE MID-WEEK SERVICE 





BUILDING UP THE 
MID-WEEK SERVICE 


CHAPTER I 


A New Way for the New Day 


I grew up on the old-time Prayer Meeting. 
I revere its memory. 

I also attended old-fashioned Class Meet- 
ings. In addition to my boyhood experiences 
in such meetings I have had them in my 
churches as a pastor. I was converted in an 
old-fashioned Revival Meeting. 

Therefore, I believe that I write with as 
much reverence as any human being can of 
those other days and other ways. I have a 
full appreciation of their value. But their 
value was to another day and another genera- 
tion. That day is gone and so have al! three 


of these church institutions: The Class Meet- 
17 


18 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


ing, the Prayer Meeting, and the Revival 
Services as they were conducted in my boy- 
hood. 

However they are not gone entirely. Psy- 
chological children of these three great church 
institutions are still with us. We have these 
three functions of the church, only they are 
taking different forms now. 

The old way will not work for the new day 
so we have evolved ways that will work. 

The Prayer Meeting Problem is the most 
acute problem that a modern preacher faces. 
He has a profound feeling that there ought to 
be some kind of a religious service in the inter- 
val of the long stretch of seven days between 
Sundays, but he has learned through bitter ex- 
perience that people will not attend the old-fash- 
ioned Prayer Meeting. 

The real truth of the matter, if that is any 
comfort to the minister, is that they did not 
attend this same Prayer Meeting in the old 
days either. At least no children or young 
people attended. They were appalled by that 
meeting. 

Evidence that the church world is greatly 
concerned about this mid-week meeting is pro- 


A New Way for the New Day 19 


duced ‘in the many books which are written 
under such headings as “The Problem of the 
Prayer Meeting,’ “What to Do About the 
Wednesday Night Service,’ “Why Our 
Prayer Meetings Fail,” and “Is There Any 
Hope for Our Mid-Week Prayer Meeting?” 

These questions have been raised and an- 
swered in many books and almost innumerable 
articles in our church papers. 

If all the editorials and special articles 
which have appeared in church publications on 
this particular problem since I entered the 
ministry were laid end to end, I verily believe 
that they would reach around the earth. 

There has been a general admission on the 
part of the church world that the mid-week 
Prayer Meeting, as it has been conducted in 
the last twenty-five years, is not pragmatic. 
It will not work. It does not reach the people. 
It does not attract them. It does not even 
make any claims to attracting children or the 
young people of a church or of a community. 
_ Many of us remember the old-fashioned 

“tl rayer Meeting. To us, at that time, it was 
~~ dull and monotonous. A small group of the 
old faithfuls were there. They sat in the same 


20 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


seats, they sang the same hymns, they offered 
the same prayers, they gave the same testi- 
monies, year in and year out. Now and then 
a young person was dragged to one of these 
meetings by an elder. That experience was 
one of unholy merriment, especially if a fellow- 
victim of like age was present. Otherwise it 
was an hour of drab monotony, spent in listen- 
ing to testimonies that one had listened to 
from childhood, and which one could repeat 
word for word. 

This old-time Prayer Meeting was not taken 
very seriously by either the church at large or 
the preacher himself. There were exceptions 
of course. I can remember some. But on the 
whole for twenty-five years this institution has 
languished and even the preachers have felt 
that it was a weak survival. 

When the preacher went to the mid-week 
meeting he usually met half a dozen old men 
and women who attended through a sense of 
habit, duty, and a general lack of desire to do 
anything else. He patiently listened to their 
complaints and to their hackneyed testimonies. 
He too could repeat both word for word. 

The history of this so called old-fashioned 


A New Way for the New Day 21 


Prayer Meeting runs back to the Wesleys. 
That is the chief reason for a change. Noth- 
ing else in church forms and customs that 
dates back that far survives. 

Who has not heard the preacher announce, 
with a listless voice: “The usual mid-week 
Prayer Meeting will be held Wednesday eve- 
ning in the Primary Room. I hope everybody 
will feel that this meeting is worthy of support 
and be there.” 

It is a lifeless announcement. He knows that 
very few will be there. He knows that none of 
his young people will be there. He knows also 
that few of his Official Board will be there. He 
really doesn’t want to go himself. 

Wednesday evening comes along and at 
seven-thirty the preacher appears. There area 
few old-timers in the meeting, scattered about 
the room. The preacher says, “We seem to be 
late in gathering this evening.” He talks as if 
that is an unusual thing. But he himself has 
made that same opening remark for years. He 
doesn’t expect much from that meeting and he 
will not be disappointed. His opening sentence 
is a psychological admission of defeat. Then 
he continues, “So we’ll sing a few of the old 


22 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


hymns until a few more gather for the meeting. 
What shall we sing?” 

The preacher has not selected any hymns in 
advance, so there is a desperately deadly pause 
between each selection. The sleepy and aged at- 
tendants don’t want to be disturbed. Why 
didn’t the minister select the hymns? Now and 
then a number is yawned out. It is usually a 
number which has been sung to death in count- 
less Prayer Meetings all in a row. 

A tedious fifteen minutes is wasted in listless 
singing without an organist. The organist is 
not there. She never is. Somebody in the front 
row volunteers to play. There is always some- 
body who will volunteer to play. There is also 
always somebody who will volunteer to say a 
piece at a party. 

The preacher speaks again: “Our usual or- 
ganist is not here, but Sister Michaeljohn has 
offered to play for us.” He groans under his 
breath. 

No further attendants appear and finally the 
poor parson scowls and in mid-week desperation 
makes some cheerful remark about how poorly 
the people of that church are supporting the 
Prayer Meeting, and that if they don’t want to 


A New Way for the New Day 23 


have a Prayer Meeting, why not discontinue it 
entirely rather than make a weekly farce of it? 

Then there is the usual reading of the Scrip- 
ture Lesson. 

Another hymn is announced. It is droned 
out ; sometimes with an organist, and sometimes 
without one. There never seemed to be any 
regular organist at this meeting. 

“We will now have a group of Sentence 
Prayers!” announces the preacher. He empha- 
sizes that word “Sentence” with considerable 
vehemence. He doesn’t exactly like to mention 
names but there are one or two individuals in 
that room at whom that emphasis is launched. 
Everybody knows who they are. They never 
offered sentence prayers in all their lives and 
the preacher knows they won't do so this eve- 
ning. 

Then come the “Sentence Prayers.” They 
are from five to ten minutes in length and they 
seem much longer. Everybody else in that 
room knows every sentence, every intonation of 
each of these prayers. 

I used to hear one such prayer which always 
ended up in this grand and glorious climax, 
every word of which I can set down from mem- 


24 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


ory because I heard it every Wednesday night 
for years: “Oh, Lord, let me so live that, when 
I am done with this earthly turmoil and trouble, 
and I have mounted up the Heavenly Jacob’s 
Ladder on Eagle Wings, and have entered into 
the Golden Gate and stand in Thy Divine Pres- 
ence, that I shall hear myself say, ‘Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant. Thou hast 
been faithful over a few things, I will make 
thee steward over many!’ ” 

This will not sound like an exaggeration to 
hundreds of preachers who have heard such 
testimonies. I certainly do not intend it for a 
caricature. It is an honest reproduction of a 
testimony which I heard for years as a boy, and 
which I could easily repeat from its beginning 
to its lengthy end, word for word. 

Another old brother in our church to whom 
I used to listen as a boy always talked about his 
“Wonderful Kissperience with God.” 

Then came the announcements. After that 
the preacher spoke. That was the brightest 
thing in the meeting, although even that was not 
up to his Sunday standard and he didn’t offer 
it as such and nobody expected it to be as well 
prepared, nor as seriously taken. No wonder. 


A New Way for the New Day 25 


There was nobody there and no inspiration for 
the preacher to make a serious effort. 

To-day it is all different. In our modern 
mid-week meeting the preacher prepares as 
carefully as he does for either of his Sunday 
services. To his way of thinking that mid-week 
service is the most important service of all the 
week. The children are there, the young people 
crowd the auditorium. There is an air of ex- 
pectation in the “Church Night.” Everybody 
from the preacher down expects a fine time and 
they have it. It is an inspiration to the preacher 
to have a great crowd at his mid-week “Family 
Night Service” and he prepares as carefully as 
if he was making his Sunday morning sermon. 

Then comes, in that old-fashioned Prayer 
Meeting, the closing prayer. Brother Jenkins, 
the official Pray-er of the meeting, was always 
expected to be asked to lead in the “Closing 
Prayer.” I can actually remember when a new 
preacher came to town one time, and was not 
warned that it was Brother Jenkins’ preroga- 
tive to make that closing prayer. Of course 
Brother Jenkins was not called on. Asa boy, I 
almost laughed out loud at that omission. I 
knew the preacher was in for it. He had uncon- 


26 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


sciously and innocently omitted a closing ritual 
for that Prayer Meeting which had been in 
force for years, farther back than I could re- 
member. 

But it was no laughing matter for the 
preacher. He found out immediately at the 
close of that Prayer Meeting, when several 
irate worshipers of God, including Brother 
Jenkins himself, informed him of his mistake. 
You would have thought that the preacher had 
deliberately, with forethought, design, and pre- 
meditation, offered an insult to Brother Jen- 
kins and his dignity as a Christian. It was the 
talk of the town for weeks. It took that 
preacher a long time to recover from that bad 
start. | 

No doubt, a long time ago, the Prayer Meet- 
ing type which I describe had its place and its 
purpose. It may have been a healthy and help- 
ful church institution. It may have been 
crowded with people. It may have been alert 
and alive. But not within the memory of the 
present generation of preachers. 

In the pioneer days of our mothers and fa- 
thers it may have had its place and its power, 
but for twenty-five years it has been one of the 
dying remnants of an old and glorious day. 


A New Way for the New Day 27 


The automobile, the radio, the motion-picture 
have all come to challenge us. The youth of this 
day cannot be interested in such a meeting. The 
name itself is forbidding. Indeed I doubt if 
ever there was a time when that type of a mid- 
week meeting interested the young. That in 
itself is an indictment against such a meeting. 

I am one who firmly believes in a mid-week 
meeting and I want it to be, and I believe that 
it can be, a deeply spiritual hour. I know that 
the world needs such a spiritual hour in mid- 
week; that from Sunday to Sunday is too long 
a space to go without this renewal of our spirit- 
ual lives. Neither am I one who believes that a 
supper, a banquet or a little polite Open Forum 
on Current Events will suffice to feed the needy 
souls of men and women. 

I still believe that this mid-week meeting must 
be a great, deep and flowing stream of spiritual 
power, so that men, and women, and children 
will be eager to attend this meeting; and so that, 
when they do come, they will find refreshments 
for their spiritual selves. 

This modern mid-week meeting for the new 
day must have even more spiritual power and 
atmosphere than its forerunner, the old-fash- 


28 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


ioned Prayer Meeting. It is entirely possible 
for it to have. 

I have known both, as I have suggested, and, 
I will wager my life that the modern mid-week 
meeting when properly conducted is fifty per 
cent more sensibly spiritual than the old type 
of meeting. Godly men conducted these old- 
time meetings and I revere their memories. 
But they had gotten into terrible ruts themselves 
and they had permitted this Wednesday night 
meeting to do the same thing. 

No preacher seemed to care or to dare to 
touch the sacred ritual of that old Prayer Meet- 
ing. If he did he was not “Preaching the Gos- 
pel.” 

But men of recent years have dared, in their 
desperation, and in the name of God; and for 
the sake of saving a sacred hour; and for the 
sake of the souls of humanity, to break new 
trails. 

And they have gloriously succeeded. The 
mid-week meeting is now an institution that 
works. It attracts both young and old. Itisa 
beautiful Family Night. It is rich in spiritual 
power. It isa place for laughter and play; for 
love and friendship. It is the meeting place of 


A New Way for the New Day 29 


Father and Son, Mother and Daughter ; lad and 
lass. Lovers find each other here. ‘They eat 
together. They sing together. ‘They pray to- 
gether. 

If, for no other reason than that the modern 
Prayer Hour interests and holds the young, it is 
superior to the old-time mid-week meeting. 
The children and the young have a place in the 
modern meeting, and they did not have a place 
in the old-time meeting. 

It is of such a meeting that I write in the fol- 
lowing chapters of this book. I talk with rever- 
ence and devotion. I talk with the authority of 
a man who confesses to failing in building a 
Prayer Meeting in two churches. In Calvary 
and First Church, San Jose, California, my 
Prayer Meetings were dismal failures. I am 
ashamed of them. But I also talk with the au- 
thority of a man who has built two modern mid- 
week services which are among the most suc- 
cessful in America. I talk in this book with 
reverence but with confidence. 

In the next chapter of this book I shall speak 
of the value of a new name for this mid-week 
meeting. It is important that it be given a new 
name. 


CHAPTER II 


Let Us Give It a New Name 


In one of Dan Crawford’s ever stimulating 
and suggestive books he tells of an African cus- 
tom that fits the spirit of this chapter. 

An African boy does not go to the end of his 
days with the name that was given him at his 
birth. He changes names from time to time as 
some new achievement comes to him. If he 
kills an elephant, or does a brave deed, he 
changes names. As he grows in stature his 
name changes. The name indicates the changes 
that appear in his developing life. 

From time to time every growing thing ought 
to be givenanewname. The old name does not 
fit the new institution. Particularly is this true 
of the mid-week devotional and prayer hour. 
It is handicapped by the old name of Prayer 
Meeting. That has the atmosphere of another 
day and another way about it. The mid-week 


service of to-day is nothing like the mid-week 
30 


Let Us Give Ita New Name 31 


service of the day when it was called a “Prayer 
Meeting.” It is a prayer meeting but it ought 
to be much more than that. 

If we write a book or an article for a maga- 
zine and the name does not cover what is in that 
book or that article the Editor is very apt to 
feel that we are careless, or that we lack imag- 
ination, and he is apt to be greatly prejudiced 
against that manuscript. The name itself also 
has a lot to do with attracting his attention be- 
fore he has even read the manuscript. 

A classic illustration of that is the story that 
Ellis Parker Butler sent in his famous story 
“Pigs is Pigs” under the title of “An Example 
in Multiplication.”’ The Editor gave the story 
its real name, and that name has gone around 
the earth. 

Let us give the new mid-week service a new 
name. Let us rechristen it. Let that name 
stand for the spirit of the new devotional hour. 
Let the name encompass the meaning, the spirit, 
and the program of that meeting. 

If for no other reason, let us give this hour 
a new name for the sake of variety. Let us 
‘give it a name that will have something of new- 
ness about it. We are no longer living in a 


32 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


Horse and Buggy Age. We are living in an 
automobile age now. The name “Prayer 
Meeting” suggests to the young people of to- 
day a “Horse and Buggy Age.” I do not say 
this with disrespect, but with a heart alert to 
the thoughts that are singing through the mind 
of Youth. 

Several names for this mid-week service have 
been suggested and are in general and popular 
use. I cannot see that this change of names has 
injured the sacredness of the mid-week meeting 
in any way. On the other hand, I can see that 
it has helped a lot. The name “Prayer Meet- 
ing’ is forbidding to this day and age. 

Praying in public seems to this age an un- 
warranted display of sacred things. It seems to 
the psychology of this age to be in the same 
class of public demonstrations as making love 
to one’s wife in a public place; or talking over 
one’s innermost secrets in a public place, rather 
than in the sacred secrecy of one’s closet and 
of one’s own home, where such matters should 
be talked. 

One of the names which has been generally 
adopted is that of “Family Night.” Personally 
I greatly like this name for it suggests the very 


Let Us Give Ita New Name 33 


thing for which this mid-week meeting ought 
to stand, and the very thing that it ought tc do 
for the members of any church. 

This mid-week service ought to be the great 
gathering together of the church membership in 
fellowship and friendliness. The Sunday serv- 
ices are necessarily formal, and more public in 
their nature. The church membership does not 
really get acquainted with itself within the 
church family. This is one of the great needs 
of the average church: to have fellowship like 
a great family within its own groups. That 
was the identical spirit of the early church in 
the days of the Roman persecutions. The 
church was like a great family. They met to- 
gether in the closest of family-fellowship. 

The mid-week meeting ought in some way to 
develop that family spirit and it ought to make 
every member of that great church family feel 
that this meeting is for each individual. That 
is the genius of the new type of meeting. 

Every group in the church, from the young- 
est to the oldest, should have a distinct place in 
this meeting. Every baby should look forward 
to that hour. 

It will build up memories in the life of a little 


34 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


baby that will never die. Just a few days before 
writing this chapter a father in my church told 
me that in just such a prayer hour in the midst 
of my sermon little Jane Kirkpatrick, in her 
mother’s arms, looked up and said suddenly, 
“Dr. Stidger is talking about Jesus again, isn’t 
he, Mother ?” 

That child is not yet three years old. Every 
child of the church ought to feel that this 
Wednesday night meeting has a place for it. 

In chapter ten of this book I shall tell how 
we have worked out the first “Graded Prayer 
Hour” in America and how successfully it 
worked during my five years’ ministry at St. 
Marks Methodist Church in Detroit, and how 
successfully it is still working; and will work 
in every church if the preacher desires to 
work it. 

I like this name “The Family Night.” 

It not only gives the membership a chance to 
meet together as a great family but it also gives 
each separate family a chance to meet together 
outside of its home, under the auspices of the 
church. That also is valuable to every unit- 
home. It is a beautiful thing for the father 
to come from his office or his work and meet 


Let Us Give Ita New Name 35. 


his family at the church on Wednesday evenings 
for supper. There ought to be unit tables; 
round tables; so that Family Groups may meet 
together. 

You say that they meet and eat together at 
home? They donot. That is one of the curses 
of this modern way of living. Seldom do entire 
families meet and eat together even in their own 
homes. 

Let the church provide them this opportunity 
and the church is rendering a spiritual service 
that will be eternally blessed to any home. I 
advocate circular small tables for the mid-week 
supper for this single and simple reason. 

In St. Marks we had circular tables and would 
have nothing else. They take up more room, 
but they give opportunities for families to get 
together and sit together. This is invaluable. 

These circular tables also give teachers a 
chance to meet with their classes for that mid- 
week meal. They also give committees a chance 
to meet together for that mid-week meal. It is 
one of the best ways to teach a church to center 
its committee and class meetings on one night. 
It is the greatest centralizing force that I have 
ever seen at work. 


36 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


Before the church knows it, the members 
have gotten into the good habit of saying, when 
there is to be a committee meeting, “Oh, let’s 
have our committee meeting on Wednesday 
night at the supper. I'll reserve a table for us. 
That will save us all an evening, and we'll all be 
there anyhow.” 

That is exactly the habit which develops when 
this mid-week service is working at its best. It 
centralizes the mid-week activities in one big 
friendly “Family Night.” 

One of the almost priceless values of this 
“Family Night” is that it gives the preacher a 
chance to meet his people face to face, to chat 
with them; truly to get personally acquainted 
with them. I have found it invaluable. I al- 
ways plan to be in the church when the first peo- 
ple begin to arrive for the supper and every 
Wednesday evening I personally shake hands 
with every person who comes. That means an 
average of five hundred people before the eve- 
ning is through in my present church although 
we frequently have a thousand people attending 
our mid-week meeting at Linwood Methodist 
Church in Kansas City. On Sundays the 
preacher, like the people, is more or less host 


Let Us Give Ita New Name 37 


~ to the outsiders who attend the church services. 


He does not have a chance to shake hands with 
all. He is on his dignity that day if he has any. 
At least it is a more or less formal day all 
around. But on this Wednesday evening if the 
“Family Spirit” prevails he has his real oppor- 
tunity of all the week to get wonderfully close 
to each one of his people. 

Another name which we used at St. Marks 
has found popularity all over the United States 
and the British Empire in church circles. I 
originated that name at St. Marks in order to 
designate in popular language the three-fold 
meaning of our particular kind of a mid-week 
Family Night Service. I called it the “Food, 
Faith and Fun Night.” I shall discuss in de- 
tail the features of the type of a meeting which 
brought upon itself thisname. That discussion 
will come in chapter nine. 

However I may say briefly here that the name 
covered the three-fold periods of our mid-week 
meeting: First, the Supper which ran from six 
to seven (the “Food” part). Second: The 
various Prayer Groups (the “Faith” part). 
Third: The Motion Pictures, Organized Play, 
etc. (the “Fun” part). 


38 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


This name, “The Food, Faith and Fun — 
Night,” is being used in hundreds of churches 
in the United States, several in Great Britain, 
according to letters and newspaper clippings 
which have come to me from time to time dur- 
ing the last five years. 

Some of my preacher friends have given the 
name a new twist by making it “The Food, 
Faith and Frolic Night,” or “The Food, Faith 
and Friendship Night,” or “The Food, Faith 
and Fellowship Night.” I sometimes think that 
I like some of the adaptations of my original 
name better than I like my own selection itself. 

Which leads me to say this: In preacher 
groups and gatherings I often have a man say: 
“Yes, that is all right for YOU to say that such 
and such a method will work. Maybe it will 
for you. Butcan we do it?” 

My answer always is: “My methods are 
merely vehicles. Anybody can use them just as 
anybody can drivea Ford ora Lincolncar. Mr. 
Ford makes them both, but it does not require 
a Ford personality to drive in either. Each man 
drives a Ford or a Lincoln according to his own 
lights, his own ways of doing things in general. 
My methods are merely Wehicles. Each man 


Let Us Give Ita New Name 39 


may use them according to his own individual- 
ity. I claim that they are workable; that 
anybody can work them; just as anybody 
can learn to drive either a Ford or a Lincoln 
car. We all drive cars differently. Even my 
wife can tell when I have been driving the car. 
She feels that something serious has happened 
to it; that the gears are all shot to pieces, that 
the steering wheel has been jerked rather ruth- 
lessly, that the tires are flatter than usual, that 
the oil and gas and water have been allowed to 
run disastrously low; that the water in the bat- 
teries has entirely evaporated. 

We drive the same car, but, according to all 
that I hear after I have been driving it, we drive 
it differently, and all the destructive things that 
happen with that vehicle happen when I am 
driving it, or when she is driving it because of 
something that I have left undone when I was 
driving it. 

An illustration of what I mean is continually 
coming to me. A man up in Maine, or a man 
out in California, or one down in Texas, who 
has been using my vehicles, writes and gives me 
a brilliant adaptation of one of my methods 
which I never thought of and which always 


40 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


pleases me greatly. The new names which have 
been evolved over my original name of “Food, 
Faith and Fun Night” have been better names 
than mine. This is due to having other minds 
at work on anidea. I like the “Food, Faith and 
Fellowship Night” name the best of all, be- 
cause that implies “Fellowship” with each 
other, with the preacher and with God. The 
name “Fun” which we first thought of is crude 
compared with the name “Fellowship.” 

Every constituency must produce different 
problems. Different types of people make it 
necessary that a preacher use his ingenuity and 
produce both new methods and new names. I 
have never used the same methods entirely in 
any church that I have had. [I find it necessary 
to produce new methods for new groups. Each 
church which I have served has compelled me 
to evolve new methods. 

For instance, in the matter under discussion 
in this chapter, I have evolved for the name of 
our Mid-Week Meeting “The Sanctuary Serv- 
ice.” We do not have a fine community house 
in which to play and run motion pictures in Lin- 
wood Boulevard Methodist Church, although 
we shall have in a short time. Therefore the 


Let Us Give Ita New Name 41 


type of a mid-week service which I ran in St. 
Marks could not be exactly the type that I run 
here. It is a different type of an auditorium— 
finished in beautiful walnut, stately, dignified, 
and the same things that fitted into St. Marks 
white, unpainted walls, covered with dirty hand- 
marks, democratic, without a single touch of 
the churchly feeling, would not fit in here. 

T saw at once that I must evolve a new name 
for my mid-week meeting here and in a few 
days “The Sanctuary Service” came to me and 
it seems to fit my mid-week meeting here per- 
fectly. 

Let us not call it a “Prayer Meeting.” Let 
us give our mid-week meeting a new name. As 
the idea of the mid-week meeting grows and 
changes, why should we keep the same name 
with all of its suggestions of that dull, monoto- 
nous and deadly hour which childhood remem- 
bers out of the past? Let us give the mid-week 
meeting a new name so that that new name will 
suggest something attractive and alluring to 
young people and to children; for every age 
ought to be and will be in the mid-week meet- 
ing, if we plan properly for it. 

In the next chapter I am going to discuss the 


42 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


matter of just how important it is for preachers 
to take this mid-week meeting seriously and how 
pragmatic it will be when the preacher expects 
great things from it. 


CHAPTER III 


Let Us Expect Much from 
That Sanctuary Service 


Last summer I was looking over Linwood 
Boulevard Methodist Church, the outstanding 
church of its denomination in the middle west, 
and one of the truly great churches of the 
United States of America. 

But like most churches its Prayer Meeting 
had died out. 

They were holding it in the Ladies’ Room, 
a small room in a rather dark corner of this 
beautiful church. That room, all told, would 
seat about fifty when it was full, but on Prayer 
Meeting night for years it had averaged about 
fifteen in attendance in a church which had a 
membership of close to two thousand. 

When we came to this small room the fine 
gentleman who was showing me over the church, 
and who was trying to make as profound an im- 


pression on my youthful mind as possible, with 
43 


44 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


the evil intention of inveigling me into becom-— 
ing the pastor of the church, said, “This is our 
Prayer Meeting Room.” 

“What? Do you hold your Prayer Meeting 
in a room like this?” said I, trying to look as 
astonished and as disappointed as I could, al- 
though I knew that that was exactly what I 
would discover, sooner or later. I myself had 
hada great Prayer Meeting of 500 at St. Marks 
for years. However, I had too much sense to 
expect to inherit this kind of a meeting in many 
churches. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would 
have handed down to me just that same mes- 
sage; the message that the business man handed 
down to me that June afternoon. 

“Well, when I get here you'll hold your 
Prayer Meeting in the main auditorium of the 
church and there will be enough people want to 
come to Prayer Meeting to fill it in a short time. 
Do you ever come to Prayer Meeting?” 

He was the manager of one of the largest 
business organizations in America and, of 
course, 1 knew that he hadn’t been coming to 
Prayer Meeting. I would have doubted his in- 
telligence if he had been coming. But I pre- 
tended that I was greatly chagrined and sur- 


Expect Much from Sanctuary Service 45 


prised that he had not been attending Prayer 
Meeting regularly. I knew that if I did not ac- 
cept that church my attitude would not hurt 
him any and might make him think; and if I 
did accept that church I could make a Prayer 
Meeting worth his attending. 

He answered my question in the negative. I 
said, “Well, you will attend Prayer Meeting 
when I come as your Pastor for it will meet a 
need in your life that will be met no place else 
in this city, and it will be so interesting that you 
will not want to stay away. We'll start right 
off with the Prayer Meeting in the main audi- 
torium.” 

It was at that juncture that I could see that 
he began to doubt my sanity. I think that he 
wondered, after all, if they really wanted me as 
their pastor. I seemed all right in all other re- 
spects except that talk about holding a Prayer 
Meeting in the main auditorium, and about hav- 
ing four or five hundred attend that Prayer 
Meeting in a church when fifty had been a mob. 
I could see a funny look in his usually bright 
eyes. He looked like a man who had received a 
great and serious disillusionment. He had built 
up great hopes on a young man’s integrity and 


46 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


here he was the first thing talking such non- 
sense as five hundred at Prayer Meeting. 

He has since admitted to me that he thought 
that my enthusiasm was overstepping the 
bounds of possibility a little that afternoon. He 
thought that maybe the Kansas heat had over- 
balanced me a little since I had been used to 
the cool breezes from Lake Erie. 

I arrived in Kansas City as per schedule 
about the middle of September, and began 
preaching in an auditorium fairly well filled in 
spite of an extremely hot wave of weather. At 
the Sunday morning service I was just foolish 
enough to announce that the auditorium would 
be used from henceforth and forever as a 
Prayer Meeting Room. 

“We'll need the auditorium because that is 
the only room in the church plant large enough 
to hold the people who will want to be there. 
We will start off our Fall Prayer Meetings 
with about five hundred in attendance, and that 
crowd will gradually grow to a thousand each 
week in attendance at our mid-week meeting. | 
This meeting will be called a Sanctuary Service. 
The first sermon preached will be the sermon 


Expect Much from Sanctuary Service 47 


selected by Dr. J. Fort Newton as one of the 
‘Best Sermons of 1925.’ 

“T am preaching this particular sermon be- 
cause I want to show you that I consider these 
Wednesday evening services the most impor- 
tant services in the church, even more impor- 
tant than either of the Sunday services. I am, 
therefore, selecting what one great preacher 
has called my best sermon preached last year. 
I do not say that it is my best sermon. I do 
not even say that itis a great sermon. I simply 
say that I am going to preach the sermon that 
Dr. Newton calls a worth-while sermon. If 
I consider that first Prayer Meeting, or Sanctu- 
ary Service, important enough to expect half a 
thousand people there, and important enough 
to preach my best sermon before, I think there 
will be a real necessity of holding the Prayer 
Hour in this church auditorium.” 

‘There were five hundred people in attendance 
that first Prayer Meeting. I had great expecta- 
tions and the people caught the contagion. I 
had more people at that Prayer Meeting and 
have continued to have, than had been attending 
both Sunday services combined for years. ‘This 


48 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


is no reflection on anybody. I am simply writ- 
ing a book on Prayer Meetings and am trying 
to show that, when you expect great things and 
prepare for great things, and consider this hour 
important enough to prepare for carefully, the 
people will come. 

This Prayer Meeting—to be generous in my 
figures—has jumped from fifty in attendance to 
an average of 500in three months. It has been 
a thousand in attendance for the last three 
weeks preceding the writing of this chapter, 
and I have just been approached about broad- 
casting this Prayer Hour. If I do it will be 
one of the first broadcastings of a Prayer 
Meeting in the United States of America. 

But it has not always been thus with my 
Prayer Meetings. 

In fact I have had two mid-week services in 
two churches which were, to my way of think- 
ing, abject and humiliating failures. It was 
because I was working on the old lines. I was 
trying to do the same thing that the preachers 
and the churches of my boyhood days had done 
for centuries unnumbered. I was trying to 
carry out the old program in the old way. The 
fact of the matter is that I did not know any 


Expect Much from Sanctuary Service 49 


better. I was to have to learn by bitter experi- 
ence. I had not been taught anything different 
in the colleges or Theological Seminaries. I 
doubt if there is any Theological School in 
America even to-day which really teaches a 
preacher how to run a modern mid-week meet- 
ing successfully. There is very little taught in 
the average Seminary that is of much practical 
benefit to a preacher when he actually gets out 
into life. 

Therefore for two pastorates—those of Cal- 
vary, San Francisco, and San Jose, California 
—I tried to run the usual type of a Prayer 
Meeting. 

The average attendance at Calvary was 
about five. ‘The average at San Jose was 
about thirty. The usual old faithfuls were 
there; the usual deadly and monotonous testi- 
monies, prayers, and songs were sung. No 
young people attended except by accident. I 
did not expect them to attend. I had not, as 
yet, caught the vision of a mid-week service 
for young as well as old. I was restless under 
this type of a Prayer Meeting. I knew that 
something was wrong with it, just as every 
preacher has felt. I knew that there ought 


50 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


to be a way to interest young people as well 
as adults in that mid-week meeting. 

However, I allowed the benumbing influence 
of tradition to creep over me in relation to 
this mid-week service. I broke loose in every 
other department of church life and did unique 
and original and successful things. I had my 
first great overflow crowds. I took more than 
three hundred people into the church my first 
year as its pastor. Everything was booming 
but the Prayer Meeting. 

T just settled down into contentment, saying 
to myself by way of easing my ministerial con- 
science, “Oh, well, the Prayer Meeting is a dead 
institution, so why should I worry about it? 
T’ll just let these old people who enjoy it oe 
in—and do what they please.” 

I didn’t expect much from it and nothing 
much ever came of it. Now, the pastor who is 
there, modeling his mid-week meetings much 
along the lines of a modern Family Night, has 
great and thriving Prayer Meetings, with an 
educational program and great crowds, pre- 
ceded by a dinner. 

However I did have this awakening. I 
promised myself that the next church I had I 


Expect Much from Sanctuary Service 51 


would break away from traditions in that mid- 
week meeting, just as I had in everything else 
and I would experiment until I actually had 
solved that Prayer Meeting Problem which 
was bothering all ministers. 

The rest of this book will deal, in its various 
chapters, with the different steps and phases 
of the development of that dream, and the 
processes of that breaking away from tradi- 
tions in the mid-week meeting. 

I feel that I speak with the authority of the 
fact that the Prayer Meetings at St. Marks 
have increased in attendance and success, under 
the ministrations of Dr. James Thomas, rather 
than diminished. That means that the system 
works and that I built well. It means that these 
methods are not peculiar to my own ways of 
doing things as many ministers say. It means 
that it is the system which works and that any 
man and every man can work the system after 
his own ideas and his own personality, as I 
have said in a previous chapter. 

Dr. Thomas does not run these mid-week 
meetings exactly as I did but the same ma- 
chinery, the same system, the same vehicle he 
uses in his own way. His mid-week meetings 


52 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


are much larger than mine were and it has be- 
come necessary there to hold them in the main 
auditorium of the church where the great new, 
pipe organ is available. 

When I contrast my experiences at San 
Francisco and San Jose with my experiences 
at Detroit and in Kansas City I know that the 
chief reason for my failure was my unwilling- 
ness or my fear of breaking away from the 
traditional type of Prayer Meeting; and the 
chief reason for my success in the last two 
churches that I have served was because I broke 
away from tradition and pioneered a new way 
for the new day in the mid-week meeting. 

In the next chapter I shall discuss a new way 
of praying, which gives everybody a chance to 
pray, and which violates no timid soul, and em- 
barrasses no child or adult; a way which is just 
as reverent and even more spiritual than the 
old system. 

To my way of thinking this new way of pray- 
ing is the very heart of the new type of a Prayer 
Meeting which we call “The Sanctuary 
Service.” 


CHAPTER [V 


The New Way of Praying 
Through the Great Flymns 


Prayer is not easy for everybody. 

Public prayer is almost impossible for most 
human beings. 

In the old day it was the common custom 
for the preacher or the leader to insist upon 
public prayer being made by persons to whom 
it was a great embarrassment and humiliation. 

Most of us can remember when the preacher 
or leader used to go up and down a row of em- 
barrassed people and say, “Now you stand up 
and tell us what the Lord has done for you!” 
Generally we were too scared to refuse and 
too nervous to know what we were talking 
about when we got up. 

There may have been those who thought that 
was a good thing but no Psychologist would say 


it was. 
53 


54 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


The truth of the matter is that only a very 
few people are trained to speak with any intel- 
ligence or with any ease on their feet and the 
general mass of people are frightened, hu- 
miliated, and injured when they are forced, 
through any show of hands, or being put in a 
corner, to make a public demonstration of such 
a sacred matter as talking with their God about 
their private spiritual affairs. | 

The old day is past when this can be done 
and thank God that it is past. The way to 
testify for God is to live for Him and work 
for Him, and give for Him; and that is a 
greater testimony than getting up in a Prayer 
Meeting, frightened to death, and saying what 
you are expected to say. 

In the nature of the case only a very small 
proportion of such testimonies or prayers could 
be sincere and honest. One was expected to 
say certain things and one did. 

The new day must have a new way of giv- 
ing people an opportunity of expressing their 
spiritual joys and emotions. Just as the old 
days when a fervent “Amen” was shouted from 
the public audience are past, so is the old way 
of the public testimony and prayer gone. 


The New Way of Praying 55 


What shall we do about it? 

We shall meet the new day with a new way. 

We shall meet it with a way that is suited 
to its psychology and its mass-spirit. We shall 
give the new mind a chance to pray demo- 
cratically. 

How? 

Through the great hymns! 

For six years we have been praying through 
the great hymns of the church. We select such 
a hymn as “Just for To-day.” 

I say to my great audience of people gathered 
in a Prayer Hour: 

“Tt is hard for most of you to pray in public. 
Youare timid. You find yourself so frightened 
that you do not get anything spiritual out of 
it when you do muster up courage enough to 
do it. I am going to give you a way of pray- 
ing that you can do easily, without embarrass- 
ment and that will bring to you a better spir- 
itual reaction than even the old way of praying 
publicly. 

“We are going to sing a great and beautiful 
Prayer-Hymn. It was originally written as a 
prayer. It has the phraseology of prayer in 
every line. It has the spiritual pulse of prayer 


56 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


in it. If you will sing it as a great prayer it 
will be such to you. That will give every person 
in this great crowd an opportunity to pray. In 
the old way, in a large crowd like this, only a 
few persons could pray at most. ‘Through 
this Prayer-Hymn everybody in this room can 
truly pray if he will. 

“Let us sing the first verse of this Prayer- 
Hymn in full voice: 


“Lord, for to-morrow and its needs, I do not 
pray ; 
Keep me, my God, from stain of sin, just for 
to-day. 
Help me to labor earnestly and duly pray; 
Let me be kind in word and deed, Father, 
to-day!’ 


“Then we shall sing the second verse of this 
great Prayer-Hymn softly—making it a prayer 
as we sing, for it is truly that: 


““Let me no wrong, or idle word, unthinking, 
say ; 
Set Thou a seal upon my lips through all 
to-day! 


The New Way of Praying 57 


Let me in season, Lord, be grave, in season, 
pray ; 

Let me be faithful to Thy grace, dear Lord, 
to-day!’ ”’ 


May I interrupt the quotations to say that, 
by this time, my audience is in a beautiful mood 
of prayer; that it is singing softly those lines 
of fervent and practical prayer, put in phrase- 
ology which few people could command in ex- 
temporaneous prayer. The lines of poetry 
themselves have a profound, dramatic effect, 
and a spiritual reaction on all of those who are 
singing this prayer. Poetry is ever the 
language of the spiritual. Even the reading of 
beautiful poetry brings a spiritual reaction and 
the united singing of Prayer Poetry brings 
even a deeper spiritual value. 

There is a tense atmosphere of prayer. The 
mood of the blessed Upper Room is on this 
ereat crowd of worshipers. It is always so. 
I have never known it to fail in six years of 
using this democratic system of prayer. Nota 
single time has it failed to produce a spiritual 
reaction in a Prayer Room and I am told by 
hundreds of individuals that this way of pray- 


58 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


ing is the most spiritual thing that happens 
in our Sanctuary Services. 

I go on with the quotations and speak to my 
meeting again: 

“The third verse we will hum. You close 
your eyes and hum this verse as a prayer and 
I shall read the lines softly to you and offer 
your prayer for you to God through that last 
beautiful verse. While Iread the Prayer-Cross 
will be lighted and the rest of the lights in this 
auditorium will be turned off. You do not 
need to close your eyes unless you wish. Look 
into the face of this lighted cross, hum the lines 
of that beautiful prayer, and I shall read them.” 
Then I touch a button beside the pulpit, the 
lights in the church go off; and a beautiful 
white Prayer-Cross goes on, gradually. The 
organist plays. The audience hums that last 
verse while I read it: 


“And if to-day this life of mine shall ebb 
away, 

Give me Thy sacrament divine, Father, 
to-day. 

So, for to-morrow and its needs, I do not pray; 

Still keep me, guide me, love me, Lord, 
through each to-day!” 


The New Way of Praying 59 


The audience has hummed this last prayer- 
verse as I have been reading it softly. The 
lighted cross has been shining into their faces. 

There is a magic effect about the preacher 
reading that last verse while the audience hums 
it. I tried this over the Radio at one of our 
Vesper Services at Christmas time. I had my 
choir hum the last verse of “Silent Night, Holy 
Night” and I received hundreds of letters from 
all over the United States telling me how 
dramatic and magic the effect of that reading 
voice on that last verse was, with a background 
of humming. 

Take such a beautiful old Prayer-Hymn as “I 
Need Thee Every Hour,” and sing three verses 
of it in the way that I have suggested, giving 
your audience to understand that it is to be 
sung as a devout prayer. It was written as a 
great, throbbing, pulsing prayer and it is easy 
to sing it in that spirit. Its spiritual reactions 
on an audience will be immediate. Sing the 
first verse in full tone, the second softly and 
the last verse, hum. If there is a Prayer-Cross 
equipment in your Prayer Room use the Cross 
on that last verse. Let your Organist play the 
Vox Humani Stops, or the Chimes. | 


60 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


“T need Thee every hour, 
Most gracious Lord; 
No tender voice like Thine 
Can peace afford. 


Chorus: 
T need Thee, 
Oh, I need Thee; 
Every hour I need Thee! 
Oh, bless me now, my Savior, 
I come to Thee!’ 


(Second verse softly) 
“T need Thee every hour, 
Stay Thou near by; 
Temptations lose their, power 
When Thou art nigh.” 


(Hum the last verse) 
(Preacher reads it softly) 


‘I need Thee every hour, 
Most Holy One; 

Oh, make me Thine indeed, 
‘Thou blessed Son!” 


The New Way of Praying 61 


Any preacher with imagination, or even the 
slightest bit of spiritual feeling, can take a 
Prayer-Hymn like this and remake the spirit- 
ual atmosphere of his meeting any time. Such 
a hymn will do ten times more to produce a 
mood of real prayer than the most fervent 
prayer of the old time brother; either preacher 
or layman; who used to bring the very stars 
down as he slapped his thigh and yelled at the 
Lord. 

The Hymn Book is full of Prayer-Hymns. 
Some of them are petitions, some are confes- 
sional, some are praise prayers. ‘There are 
Prayer-Hymns to suit every mood and need 
and they ought to be used as prayers, for that 
was what they were written for. 

This way of praying for the new day works. 
It fills a need of prayer which each soul has. 
It gives the audience and the individuals that 
make up that audience a sense of having prayed, 
a Spiritual reaction, and a feeling of well-being; 
as those who have walked and talked with God. 

I do not want to fill up this chapter with 
Prayer-Hymns, but I will suggest titles of a 
few Prayer-Hymns that we have used with 
magical results: 


62 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


(1) 
(2) 
(3) 
(4) 
(5) 
(6) 
(7) 
(8) 


(9) 
(10) 
(11) 
(12) 
(33) 
(14) 
(15) 
(16) 
(17) 
(18) 
(19) 
(20) 


“T Am Coming to the Cross.” 

“Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.” 

“Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” 

“Love Divine, All Love Excelling.” 

“More Love to Thee, O Lord!’ 

“Nearer, Still Nearer.” 

“Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Me.” 

“T Am Thine, O Lord, I Have Heard 
Thy Voice!” 

“There is a Fountain.” 

“Just as I Am.” 

“Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” 

“Abide with Me.” 

“Lead, Kindly Light!’ 

“Savior, Lead Me Lest I Stray!” 

“My Jesus, I Love Thee?’ 

“Nearer, My God, to Thee!’ 

“Take My Life and Let It Be!” 

“Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross!” 

“Sweet Hour of Prayer.” 

“IT Must Tell Jesus.” 


I could go on indefinitely. I just set down 
these titles of the old and the more modern 
hymns which fill every type of a hymn book to 
show that there are innumerable Prayer- 
Hymns which may be used in this magic way. 


The New Way of Praying 63 


The source is unfailing; the method is prag- 
matic; the spiritual reactions are a blessing to 
preacher, to each indiviual and to the audience 
as a whole! 

As a preacher trying to meet modern prob- 
lems and perplexities, trying to adopt my 
program to the usages, the customs, the 
language, and the psychology of the new day, 
I have never worked out a plan for prayer 
which is half so effective as this one is—year 
in and year out. | 

It meets aneed. It gives a poor timid soul— 
and there are many of them—the chance to 
release those dammed up Prayer-Complexes 
which the modern Psychology is telling us 
about. This method releases emotional com- 
plexes which have had need of a source of ex- 
pression fora long time. Therefore those who 
attend such a service have such a feeling of 
spiritual warmth and help that they want to 
come back. They do not always know just why, 
but they “Know What They Want” spiritually. 

It is a democratic way of praying. It gives 
people a chance to pray in crowds, like they 
yell at ball games. People of this age are more 
gregarious than ever and they like to do things 
in mass. 


64 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


It releases Emotional Complexes for nervous 
‘people. It gives them about the only emotional 
release they have all week. I have seen men 
and women sitting before me, looking up into 
that white cross, humming the prayer of an old 
hymn, with the tears running over their cheeks. 
In fact this is a common experience every time 
we use this method. 

In the next chapter I shall discuss the new 
type of testimony. In some way our modern 
Prayer Meeting must give those who attend 
and who desire, a chance for self-expression. 
Many will not wish this, but for those who do, 
a new way must be provided. People are not so 
elib as they used to be about publicly express- 
ing their deeper spiritual emotions. It is not 
that they do not have them, because they do— 
more than ever human beings had them; but it 
is just that we are a little less eager to talk 
about our private affairs and our deeper feel- 
ings ina public place. I personally most heart- 
ily sympathize with this new shyness. I think 
that it is just as genuine for this day as the 
eagerness to expose one’s spiritual state was 
in the older day and way. 


CHAPTER V 


The New Type of Personal 


Lestimony 


It is a good thing for a human Bene to have 
self-expression. 

There was that much of value in the old- 
fashioned personal testimony. 

Not every person could talk. Even if they 
did they did not want to talk about things so 
intimate as their spiritual status. 

“T am living close to the Lord. I pray daily 
and fervently. I have lost my temper many 
times this week but the Lord has forgiven me 
for that.” Thus ran the general tone of the 
old type of personal testimony. We all remem- 
ber. It was generally the same thing over each 
week. I have no particular fault to find with 
a Christian who wants to tell, nor who did, in 
the old days tell, about his intimate spiritual 
condition. I used to do so myself when a boy 
in the old type of a Prayer Meeting. 

65 


66 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


I have no objection to a person who likes that — 
way of doing having a chance to talk even 
in the new Sanctuary Service. But what I 
do say is, that people of this day and age do not 
desire todoso. That does not necessarily mean 
that they do not have anything to think about. 
It does not mean that they are not deeply and 
reverently religious. It does not mean that 
they are any less devoted to Christ than our 
dear friends of another day, many of whom 
survive in our churches to-day; to deplore, 
rather critically, that the days of the “Old 
Gospel” are gone. They imply that the church, 
and the preachers, and the people of to-day have 
gone to the dogs spiritually. 

They have a way of saying that a preacher 
who does not do things in the way they used 
to be done is not preaching “The Gospel.” 
Most of the folks who offer this criticism do 
it in rather an unkindly and an un-Christian 
manner. Many of them are not far short of 
fault-finding in this type of criticism. In fact 
they are violating the very foremost tenets 
of Christ’s teaching. 

Christ had and taught a great reverence 
for the other person’s opinion. He taught that 


New Type of Personal Testimony 67 


there was nothing more sacred than Personal- 
ity. That meant another person’s opinions. 
That implied another generation’s views. And 
yet the defenders of the old way of doing 
things do not hesitate to speak most bitterly 
of the generation that lives to-day and does 
not care to parade its show of piety before 
the throng; and therefore does not take to 
personal testimony readily. 

Now, what “The Gospel” actually means is 
“The Good News.” ‘That is as fair a defini- 
tion of it as can be given. Yet most of these 
people who criticize the present generation be- 
cause it is not shouting from the housetops 
the spiritual condition of its soul, insinuate that 
this generation does not know what salvation, 
regeneration, and religion mean. 

Having lived in both generations, and hav- 
ing been converted in an “Old-fashioned Re- 
vival Meeting’; and believing firmly in the 
reality of that experience; and having seen 
the results of both types of a Prayer Meeting, 
I sincerely believe that the present type of 
Family Night is more helpful, more deeply 
spiritual, and closer to practical Christian liv- 
ing and doing than the old type. 


68 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


The old type of a Christian meeting was 
made up largely of testimony which was con- 
tinually alluding to what the “Lord has done 
for ME!” It was distinctly a selfish type of 
testimony. It was mostly talk about what to 
get and keep for one’s self, with little thought 
of a religion that had to do with service to 
others. 

A few days ago I was talking with Sinclair 
Lewis, author of “Main Street,” “Babbitt” and 
“Arrowsmith,” about the difference in the 
church of the old day and the church of this 
day. He is writing a book on the church. I 
told him that I felt that the difference consisted 
in this: In the old day the Christian was trying 
to get something for himself; in the new day 
he is trying to give something. 

The difference is in getting and giving. In 
the old Prayer Meeting the testimony generally 
consisted of what God had given and done for 
the man making the testimony. The present 
spirit seems to be a testimony as to what God 
is helping us to do for somebody else. 

As for me I believe that the latter day is 
better than the former. 


New Type of Personal Testimony 69 


Religion of to-day is essentially a religion of 
service. 

Religion of yesterday was essentially selfish. 

Therefore the type of testimony, or self-ex- 
pression, which fits in with the spirit of to-day 
in church work is one of action. 

“Good news” is the theme of to-day’s testi- 
mony. It is “The Gospel” just as it was before 
but it is the Gospel in action. _ 

Therefore we have worked out a type of 
Testimony, or Self-Expression, in the modern 
Sanctuary Service which I call the “Gossip 
Period,” or “Good News Period.” 

Churches have always suffered with a bad 
kind of Gossip. It has been the great tempta- 
tion of the other type of church member, be- 
cause he was essentially selfish in his religion. 
Every preacher will testify that Gossip; par- 
ticularly in small-town churches has been vi- 
cious in church circles. 

So in our modern type of a mid-week meet- 
ing we have tried to, and have succeeded in de- 
veloping, a morale for a good kind of Gossip. 

Gossip in its fundamental constituency is 
really Conversation. Conversation is good. 


70 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


Therefore let us have good conversation, and 
good gossip, and Good News; and let us drive 
out of the church the old petty, mean spirit of 
Gossip by developing a technique of good 
Gossip. 

To that end in our “Good News Period” the 
church is trained to bring to that period all 
the good news it can find in the church, on the 
streets, in the papers. Cora Harris in one of 
her books tells about an idea she once had of 
editing a page for the newspaper which would 
be called “The Good News Page.” She tried 
it out and it worked. It was so sensational 
that it boosted circulation. She searched out 
the husbands and wives who had lived together 
for fifty years and had raised large families 
and sent them out into the world; all as good 
citizens. She published the photographs of 
these old folks in the middle of that page and 
wrote a good story about them. That page got 
to be the most popular page in the newspaper. 
It worked because it was so rare to find “Good 
News” in the papers. 

It will work in exactly that same way in the 
“Good News Period” of a mid-week meeting. 

Mr. Jones has just heard a bit of good news 


New Type of Personal Testimony 71 


about the church: “I was riding on a street 
car yesterday and I heard a couple of young 
people talking about our Sunday evening church 
service. They were planning to be here next 
Sunday evening because they had such inspira- 
tional times whenever they came that they said 
they would rather come here than go to a 
show.” | 

Mrs. Johnson heard a neighbor woman say 
that her husband, who had not been in the habit 
of churchgoing for ten years, was coming regu- 
larly to this church now; wouldn’t miss a Sun- 
day evening service for anything. 

Another man gets up and tells about a poor 
family that a certain class in the Sunday school 
helped and how grateful the family was. 

Up jumps a little wiry man and says: “TI 
never thought much of that testimony stuff they 
used to expect of us, but I’m glad to report 
that a fellow in the lobby of this church was 
so pleasant with me last Sunday morning and 
invited me to this Wednesday night meeting 
so cordially that I’m here and I’ve enjoyed it 
so much that I’m coming regularly, and I just 
thought this would fit in with your ‘Good News’ 
idea.”’ 


72 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


And so it goes. Some person has heard — 
Good News about the preacher, about his ser- 
mons, about the choir, about some solo. He 
has heard good news about a _ neighbor 
church. He has heard good news about some 
Missionary enterprise. He wants to tellit. He 
likes to tell it. 

Another read a striking poem in the paper 
that helped him spiritually and he wanted to 
pass this “Good News’”’ on to others so he reads 
the poem. 

Another has read a good book which he 
wants others to know about so he passes the 
name of that good book on. 

Every Wednesday evening will see this part 
of the service full to the limit of time. A great 
Chicago churchman visited our “mid-week” | 
recently and said after it was over: “I liked 
that ‘Good News’ period because tit popped 
every minute.” 

“It popped every minute” is a good descrip- 
tion of such a meeting. There are no long- 
drawn-out, monotonous testimonies but “It 
pops every minute.” That is the difference. 
One listens to these testimonies of service and 
his spiritual self is quickened. He goes out of 


New Type of Personal Testimony 73 


that meeting on the alert for “Good News.” 
He wants some “Gospel” to bring to the next 
one. There is seldom time for all who want 
to talk. There is a sense of alertness over 
the entire hour. That “Good News,” or “‘Gos- 
sip” or “Gospel Period,” is the most stimulat- 
ing part of the entire service, although we sel- 
dom give more than ten to fifteen minutes for 
it in one of our Sanctuary Services. 

‘This “Good News” period has a by-product 
that is most useful. The wise preacher will 
have a stenographer present or will himself 
jot down the more interesting human-interest 
things that are said and use them in his church 
bulletin the next Sunday. 

A quickening element in a church bulletin is 
the human interest paragraph. It does not 
need to be a “personal item” like newspapers 
run, but an actual quotation from this “Good 
News” that comes on Wednesday evening in 
this open talk-fest. 

We publish a bulletin that goes all over 
America in a paid subscription list of five hun- 
dred. It is full every week of human-interest 
paragraphs which I glean from this “Good 
News Period’ in the Sanctuary Service., The 


74 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


people read it with great eagerness because of 
that human-interest material with which its 
pages throb every Sunday. 

Personally I believe that this type of testi- 
mony is more vital and more deeply spiritual 
than the other kind and I have taken part 
in, and listened to, both kinds. I have been 
working this “Good News” in mid-week serv- 
ices for six years and it grows stronger, more 
practical, and more spiritual every week. It 
is a tried and tested method. I believe that 
it is the method for this day and for this 
generation. 

The old day when a mid-week meeting was 
judged by how many testified and how many 
prayed is gone. It is not how many pray or 
how many testify that judges a good or a bad 
meeting to-day but it is what they say and 
what sort of a spiritual atmosphere and quick- 
ening that “Good News” produces in the hearts 
of men. 

In the next chapter I shall briefly discuss the 
informality of this new type of a mid-week 
meeting; and how to produce it and still retain 
the spiritual values. 


CHAPTER VI 


LInformality of the Mid-Week 
Meeting and How to Produce It 


The Prayer Meeting of other days was for- 
midable. 

It was forbidding and children were awed 
by it. Young people were bored by it, and 
consequently did not attend unless they were 
forced to go. 

Most American meetings of a secular sort 
in colleges, in high schools and elsewhere have 
a certain amount of democratic informality. 

I believe that the mid-week meeting should 
be informal, without losing its spiritual dignity. 

The two Sunday services are formal enough 
to serve that need of humanity. In fact my 
program has a place for only one formal, 
stately, dignified service and that is in the 
morning of a Sabbath Day. In the evening I 
have always made my service informal and 


popular, and I have always had great throngs 
75 


76 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


at these Sunday evening services, also I have 
had more accessions to the church from this 
evening service than I have had from the more 
formal morning service. 

This is due to the fact that, with the more 
popular and informal evening service, I have 
always reached the unchurched people. My 
appeals for Christ and the church, therefore, 
have fallen on ears that were in need of the 
church and out of the church. Those who 
attend the more formal morning services have 
always been the old and regular church mem- 
bers. 

It is for this reason that I believe that the 
successful modern mid-week meeting must be 
informal. 

To that end the first difference I make in 
the Sunday services and the mid-week service 
is to eliminate formal dress. I wear a busi- 
ness suit. I get closer to my people in this 
way. It is more of a “Family Night” when 
I dress in that manner. People feel more at 
home and so do I. 

The second thing that we do to make the 
meeting informal is to have the preacher stand 
down on the main floor in front of the altar 


Informality of Mid-Week Meeting 77 — 


rather than in the pulpit. He thereby puts 
himself down on a level with his people. They 
like this feature. It makes this meeting differ- 
ent from both Sunday services and that is well. 
It makes it even more informal than the popular 
Sunday evening service, and that also is as it 
should be. 

I have always stood before a small desk on 
the floor of the church auditorium throughout 
the entire service, never sitting down, always 
on my feet, always directing everything that 
goes on in that service; always keeping a hand 
on the emotional waves that throb through that 
sacred hour. 

The third thing that I do to make this meet- 
ing informal is to have a “Billy Sunday Big 
Sing.” I give it that name to make it sound 
informal. I select these hymns myself, and 
most carefully, before the service. I shall speak 
of this more in detail in the twelfth chapter 
of this book. 

I never leave anything to chance in this meet- 
ing from beginning to end. I do not want any- 
body to feel that it has not been carefully and 
prayerfully planned for. I want it to be infor- 
mal but not slipshod. I make just as careful 


78 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


preparation for the informality of this hour as 
I do for either Sunday service. That is where 
many of us preachers fall down into failure. 
We do not take this mid-week meeting seriously 
and neither does anybody else if we do not. I 
spend all of Wednesday morning planning every 
detail of this informal meeting. 

I myself direct this “Big Sing.” I have a 
piano and an organ, and sometimes a cornet in 
addition, to help me lead it. I also have from 
one to two song-leaders who actually stand up 
informally in front of the crowd and lead the 
singing, but I myself direct it, announce the 
hymns, tell that crowd how I want them to sing 
the hymns. I do that because I want a certain 
unified effect to be produced and everything 
must work to that end. 

As I direct this “Big Sing’ I walk down 
among the people; up one aisle and down an- 
other. I see a strange face here and one there. 
I shake hands if I can. I smile a greeting to 
those who are so far inside the seats that I can- 
not shake hands. I see a young man or a boy. 
I want him to know that I am especially aware 
of his presence and that I am glad he is there. 
I see a lonely face in that crowd and I shake 


Informality of Mid-Week Meeting 79 


hands with that man or woman. I may not 
even get a chance to talk, but a handclasp will 
tell a lot to alonely man or woman. I walk up 
and down the aisle of my church while people 
are singing so that my going and coming will 
not attract a lot of attention. People like to get 
close up to a preacher if that preacher interests 
them at all. 

I’m not much to look at but I like people. I 
have had hundreds say to me, “TI like your go- 
ing up and down the aisles of the church. Even 
if you don’t speak to me; just a smile; just to 
know that you are passing by helps. I look for- 
ward to the moment in the service when you 
walk up and down.” 

I do not know that all preachers can do this. 
It must be done naturally or it will seem stilted, 
stiff, and melodramatic. But I offer it to those 
who can do it naturally as a good way to make 
a mid-week meeting informal, friendly, home- 
like, and heart-warming. 

Joseph Parker said, “If I had my ministry to 
live over again I would preach more to broken - 
hearts.” 

He was right. Every crowd has a good many 
broken hearts in it. We know of only a few of 


80 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


them. They come to a Sanctuary Service be- 
cause they need help. 

I was walking through my crowd this week— 
the week I write this chapter. I was reaching 
out here and there shaking hands. I came to 
one of my most prominent business men, a man 
of wealth and power inthe community. I didn’t 
think that he needed my poor feeble friendship 
very much and I was about to pass him by when 
I noticed a lonely, stricken look in his face. I 
reached out my hand, with that instinctive elec- 
trical outpouring of sympathy that we human 
beings may sometimes have. The tears came 
into his eyes. I said, “Stop and see me a min- 
ute after the meeting.” He said, “TI will, thank 
you!” 

Hecame. I had not heard the dreadful news 
that his partner had that very afternoon com- 
mitted suicide. He had been with that man for 
fifteen years and loved him like a brother. It 
meant a terrible upheaval in his business life. 
It had wrenched the very foundations of his 
life. I would likely not have caught that man 
in his most dreadful hour of need if I had not 
been walking down among my people. I would 


Informality of Mid-Week Meeting 8! 


have heard in a day or two, but when he needed 
me was at that very hour. 

Informality does not mean foolishness. A 
Sanctuary Service is no place for clownishness, 
nor for tricks. It is a deeply consecrated hour 
to do the weary souls of men and women good; 
to get them closer to God; to lift them out of 
their troubles and make them forget. It is an 
hour devoted to the sublime spiritual task of 
giving them new strength for the battle of life. 
It is a midway point between Sabbaths which 
all men and women need. 

In the next chapter I want to talk about that 
special feature—service at least once each 
month to add variety to the mid-week meeting 
and to give your crowd a chance to hear an out- 
side voice, preferably a preacher. This, to my 
way of thinking, is vitally important. 


CuHapter VII 


Once a Month Feature Service 


for the Mid-Week Meeting 


Once a month in this most successful mid- 
week service one ought to have an outside 
voice. 

I try to bring the best preachers of America 
to my people. 

It is possible to get them on Wednesday eve- 
nings but not on Sunday. A great preacher will 
not want to leave his church on the Sabbath 
but he will leave now and then on Wednesday 
evening. 

This gives a variety and a sense of impor- 
tance to the mid-week meeting that it has not 
had before. If you consider it important enough 
to invite the great bishops, preachers and pub- 
lic speakers of America to address it, your peo- 
ple will consider it important. 

I am aware of the fact that small churches 


cannot scour all America to get speakers, but 
82 


Once a Month Feature Service 83 


they can get speakers of note from their town, 
and county and state. 

I finance this by taking a collection every 
Wednesday night. 

There is no reason to feel shy about this. 
People are glad to pay for something that is 
worth while, and if you let it be understood that 
this weekly collection goes into a fund to im- 
prove that very meeting and to provide this 
once-a-month outside speaker they will be glad 
to contribute. This also makes the mid-week 
meeting different. Ordinarily a collection is 
not taken at a Prayer Hour—but why not? 

We average about $25 a week in this collec- 
tion. That makes a fund of a hundred dollars 
a month. One hundred dollars a month will do 
a great deal toward getting outside speakers. 
In addition to this source of income, on the night 
that the outside speaker appears the collection 
will double itself according to our experience, so 
you really have $125 to $150 a month in your 
Prayer Meeting collection fund. 

In lieu of a speaker for this meeting I often 
have a religious pageant at that once-a-month 
meeting. My organized classes put these page- 
ants on and they are very valuable spiritually as 


84 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


well as in other ways. They are valuable spirit- 
ually to the young people who put them on. On 
the night that a certain organized class puts a 
pageant on, that class is very likely to attend 
the mid-week meeting in a body through a 
sense of class-pride. And always many get in 
the habit of attending regularly in that way. 

I have never yet seen a single pageant of this 
kind put on that the effect on the Wednesday 
evening audience was not profoundly and beau- 
tifully spiritual. JI have stood in all parts of 
the audience and have watched the deep impres- 
sion these religious pageants make on people. 
Even the most simple presentation of the life of 
Christ and of the scenes in the Bible impress 
people when these scenes are presented in tab- 
leau or in picture form. 

One pageant which the Criterion Class of 
Linwood Boulevard Church put on was as sim- 
ple as it could be. It was the story of Christ’s 
life presented in picture form. The stage set- 
ting was simply a large frame, like a picture- 
frame. This setting was put on the pulpit, with 
the organ console directly back of the frame 
and a curtain between the frame and the organ. 
The organist played the old hymns of the 


Once a Month Feature Service 85 


church which were appropriate to the various 
scenes in the Life of Christ. 

For instance, when the Bethlehem scene in 
the manger was presented, ‘Silent Night” was 
played softly and a girl in the wings sang that 
old and beautiful hymn. The effect was 
magical. 

In the Gethsemane scene, which was nothing 
more or less than a human reproduction of the 
Hofmann painting, “Alas, and Did My Savior 
Bleed!” was the hymn, and in the scene where 
Jesus is gathering little children to him “I 
Should Like to Have Been with Him Then’ 
was played softly, and sung. 

This simple production, which can be staged 
by any church, large or small, with simple cos- 
tumes, and an inexpensive stage-setting, will 
produce one of the most spiritual atmospheres I 
have ever seen in a Prayer Hour. 

When I inquired where my young people got 
the costumes I learned that most of what looked 
like shepherd and angel costumes were old 
bath robes, white dresses and simple things, 
which, under the colored lights, appeared to be 
costumes made by the most expert costumers of 
the city. 


! 


86 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


The toal cost of this particular production of 
“The Life of Christ’ in pictures was twelve 
dollars and the collection on that night under 
the mellowing spiritual influence of that beauti- 
ful portrayal was close to fifty dollars. 

I like to have one evening devoted to what my 
friend Dr. Nelson Pace calls “Poetry which 
Preaches.” On this evening [ take the poem of 
a great poet, like Edwin Markham’s “How the 
Great Guest Came,” “The Shoes of Happiness’’ 
or some other poem which really preaches, and 
give an evening to the spiritual interpretation 
of this poet and his poetry. Youcan have some- 
body read some of the briefer poems of this 
writer. You can have somebody sing some of 
this writer’s poetry which is often put to music. 
You can often have the poet himself appear. 
Then you have the half hour for your own mes- 
sage from “Poetry which Preaches.” 

In “Pictures which Preach” you can do the 
same thing. You get a copy of Hofmann’s 
Gethsemane for illustration. You put it up in 
your Prayer-Hour room, and focus a spotlight 
on it during the prayer period. Then you 
preach on that picture. 

These once-a-month Feature Services get 


Once a Month Feature Service 87 


many people in the habit of attending the Sanc- 
tuary Service who otherwise might not be at- 
tracted, even by such an alluring type of a mod- 
ern service as I am trying to set forth in this 
book. I have seen hundreds of people get their 
start by attending one of these special once-a- 
month Feature Services on Wednesday eve- 
nings and become habitual attendants. 

Another way to increase attendance, and 
make habitual attendance probable, is that 
“Group Night Plan” which we have worked out, 
and which I shall discuss in the next chapter. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Group Nights at the Mid-Week 
Meeting 


The first thing that a preacher must do to re- 
make the mid-week meeting is to build up mo- 
rale among his church members for that meet- 
ing. 

He must teach the church to hold that night 
sacred. 

If he does not take this thing seriously he can- 
not expect the church to take it seriously. 

It may take a little time, but I have seen such 
a morale developed in a church that a group 
would as soon think of having something else 
at the hour of the Prayer Meeting on Wednes- 
day as they would think of scheduling a dance 
on Sunday morning. 

A church is nearly always willing to cooper- 
ate with a preacher who takes this Wednesday 
evening meeting seriously. If he proposes to 


Group Nights at Mid-Week Meeting 89 


the various church organizations that they re- 
frain from scheduling other meetings between 
the hours of 6:30 and 8:30 on Wednesday eve- 
ning I believe that he will find them eager to 
help preserve those hours sacredly. 

The first thing the minister must do in this 
propaganda of education is to make the church 
understand that this is a great spiritual hour. 
He must make the church constituency under- 
stand that seven days between spiritual refresh- 
ment is a long time; that the church needs the 
Spiritual impetus which this meeting can give 
and that that hour is set aside for no small 
thing. He must make his church group feel 
that, in his eyes, that Wednesday night meeting 
is just as important, just as sacred as either of 
the Sunday services. 

If he himself takes this hour in that serious 
way, if he himself prepares his sermons for this 
Wednesday evening meeting just as carefully as 
he prepares his Sunday sermons; if he himself 
advertises this meeting just as seriously, then he 
can go to the church and ask the church to re- 
frain from scheduling other meetings at this 
hour. 

Let there be a general slogan in the church 


90 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


life: “Nothing Else on Wednesday Evening but 
the Sanctuary Service.” 

Then come your Group-Night plans. 

Every church, large and small, has in it or- 
ganized classes. These will be an Adult Bible 
Class, a Boy Scout Group, a Criterion Class 
made up of young people of both sexes; a Win- 
some Class, made up of young married people, a 
Mothers’ Class, made up of the young mothers 
of the church. 

In order to interest each one of these groups 
of the church in the Sanctuary Service it will 
be helpful to have a month or two of what I 
call Group Nights in the Prayer Meeting. Call 
these Group Nights by the name of the groups 
which are to be special guests on the various 
evenings. For instance, recently, we had the 
Criterion Class of Linwood Boulevard give a 
beautiful pageant of Christ’s Life in the Prayer 
Hour. I took this opporunity of inviting the 
Criterion Class as a group to attend the mid- 
week meeting. Fifty of them came. It was 
their night. I always find that following such 
a special Group Night many of the various 
groups get interested and become regular at- 
tendants at the Prayer Hour. 


Group Nights at Mid-Week Meeting 91 


I learned this lesson through the Group 
Nights which for years I have planned for the 
Sunday night services. For years I have been 
having International Night, Masonic Night, 
Odd Fellows’ Night, Lion’s Club Night, Rotary 
Night, etc. I have learned, through experience, 
that, from each one of these nights, when these 
organizations come in a body as our “Guests of 
Honor,” many of them get into the church- 
going habit and become regular attendants. I 
have never had a Masonic Night that I have not 
seen, as a direct result of each of these special 
nights, several regular attendants and new 
members come into the church. 

So it is with these Group Nights within the 
church organization. It serves to interest cer- 
tain individuals who never attend the Prayer 
Hour in becoming regular attendants. It al- 
ways works in this way. From each of these 
Prayer Hour Group Nights we see a few new 
attendants at the Prayer Service. This nucleus 
naturally attracts others and, before long, you 
will find a large proportion of these various 
groups attending the mid-week meeting. They 
will hardly know just how they got interested, 
but if you yourself get to talking with them and 


92 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


will trace it back you will learn that hundreds 
started in the first attendance at Prayer Service 
of their particular class. 

I have not attempted to extend this Group- 
Night idea outside of the church organization. 
It is my idea that the mid-week meeting should 
be confined to the church membership and be- 
come in the truest sense of that phrase a “Fam- 
ily Night.” There is no distinctive Family 
Night in the whole church schedule save this 
one on Wednesday night. In the modern 
church, run on efficiency lines, the Sunday serv- 
ices are more or less crowded with strangers 
and outsiders. . There is no chance to get ac- 
quainted with each other within the church 
membership. Let us keep this mid-week hour 
sacred for the Family of the church. 

I always ask my choir director to have his 
practice with his choir on Wednesday evenings. 
The choir has to practice one night, and it is 
just as easy to make it Wednesday evening as 
Friday evening. They usually start to practice 
about eight or eight-thirty, so this coming on 
Wednesday evening does not, in any way, take 
any more time. And it does serve to centralize 
the life of the mid-week church meeting on 


Group Nights at Mid-Week Meeting 93 


Wednesday evening. This is just an additional 
step towards that centralization, and it is an ex- 
ceedingly important step, I can assure you. 

This gives you the additional asset of the 
presence of the choir at the church mid-week 
meeting. You can have special music then with- 
out any great additional burden to your choir 
or to the leader. The right kind of a leader will 
be glad to do this. He will be willing to help and 
serve in any way that he can. The right kind 
of a choir will also feel the same way about it. 
Besides, there is the additional attraction of a 
bright, happy evening. 

I give my choir something to do in the “Big 
Sing.” 

I call on individuals to “sing a verse’ of a 
certain hymn, while the congregation joins in on 
the chorus. 

I get four of them up and organize on the spot 
extemporaneous quartets. Then I ask two of 
them to sing a duet. They like it. There is the 
spice of uncertainty and informality about it. 
I ask those who are not usually asked to sing 
solos in the Sunday service to sing a verse of 
some old, familiar hymn alone. I give the choir 
something to do and make them help me in the 


94 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


singing at that mid-week meeting. This-adds 
one additional popular value to the mid-week 
meeting. | 

In addition to asking the choir to have its 
weekly practice on Wednesday evening I also 
hold all Official Board Meetings on Wednesday. 
I thereby interest the members of the Official 
Board in this mid-week service and that in itself 
is anachievement. However, asa result of this 
system, I can honestly say that in two churches, 
for six years I have had at least ninety per cent 
of my Official Board present at the mid-week 
service. 

I say to them: “You are busy men and I do 
not see any reason why I should ask you to come 
out two evenings, one for the Board meeting 
and one for the Prayer Meeting. So we will 
save a night for you and have the regular 
monthly Official Board Meeting following 
Prayer Service. That is the time we usually 
begin the Official Board Meetings anyhow.” 

The result is that the Official Board gets into 
the habit of attending the Prayer Meeting and 
they come regularly in a few months. 

I also ask the Sunday School Board to have 
its regular meeting following the Prayer Hour 


Group Nights at Mid-Week Meeting 95 


on the second Wednesday of each month, and 
for the same reason. This naturally gets each 
teacher in the Sunday School interested in the 
mid-week Prayer Hour and this is a great asset, 
both for the teachers themselves and for the 
Prayer Service. 

But most important of all is getting a church 
into the habit of scheduling all committee meet- 
ings for Wednesday evenings after the Prayer 
Service. Every active church has literally hun- 
dreds of committee meetings. If the preacher 
can get a morale established in a church, or a 
habit established that all committee meetings 
come on Wednesday evenings following the 
Prayer Hour, he has added a great asset to that 
mid-week service. 

Personally I have not found this a difficult 
task. We are all gregarious animals and we 
like to meet with our kind. 

I believe that the great secret of success in the 
attendance on the mid-week meeting is in a 
centralization of the life of the church on 
Wednesday evening. 

Plan everything you have authority over for 
that night. Ask the church leaders to help you 
to establish this centralization in the church. A 


96 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


few months of this type of centralization will 
see your Prayer Hour grow up by leaps into a 
gathering that will, as in our case, require the 
main auditorium of the church for its meeting 
place. 

In the next chapter I wish briefly to review 
the “Food, Faith and Fun” features of this 
mid-week meeting, in spite of the fact that I 
have already covered this particular contribu- 
tion in my book, “Standing Room Only.” I 
make no particular apologies for this rewrite 
because there are constantly changes and new 
ideas coming up in an active ministry. Each 
new church adds new features to an old idea. I 
think that my readers will find the next chapter 
will be necessary to complete a full-rounded dis- 
cussion of the mid-week meeting of to-day. 


CHAPTER IX 


The °‘ Food, Faith and Fun’’ 
Features of the Mid-Week 
Meeting 


As I have said in a preceding chapter on a 
new name for the mid-week meeting, this 
“Food, Faith and Fun Night” has also been 
called “The Food, Faith and Frolic Night,” 
“The Food, Faith and Friendship Night,” and 
other names. 

However, all of these new names encompass 
the real meaning of the new type of a mid-week 
service. 

That is: They indicate in the very name itself 
that the evening will consist of physical food, of 
spiritual food and of social food. 

The schedule of a “Food, Faith and Fun 
Night” should run about like this: 

(1) Supper, 6:00 to 7:00. This is the 
“Food” part. 

97 


98 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


(2) Prayer, 7:00 to 8:00. This is the 
“Faith” part. 

(3) Play, 8:00 to 10:00. This is the 
“Fun” part. 

The heart of such a mid-week meeting should 
consist of these three distinct features. They 
encompass the meeting. 

I have had the experience of seeing the 
women of a church in their “Circles of Service” 
serve from three to five hundred people regu- 
larly, year in and year out, from six to seven, 
with everybody through their generous supper 
and up in the Prayer Room by 6:45, ready to 
start the meeting with fifteen or ten minutes 
of a preliminary “Big Sing.” This was true 
at St. Marks in Detroit and it is now true in 
Linwood Boulevard Methodist Church in Kan- 
sas City, Mo. 

In neither of these two large churches have 
I ever known a single Prayer Hour to be de- 
layed a minute because everybody was not 
served and through within the hour allotted to 
this part of the “Food, Faith and Fun Night.” 

I am often asked the question: “Do you find 
it possible to serve large groups of people with- 


“Food, Faith, and Fun” Features 99 


in the hour and not have confusion about peo- 
ple straggling into the Prayer Meeting late?’ 

My answer is that such a thing has never 
happened in my ministry. The “Food” part 
of this schedule can be so carefully arranged 
that the whole thing will run like well-oiled ma- 
chinery. 

At St. Marks the Circle that was to serve the 
supper on Wednesday evening was in the 
kitchen early in the morning. Their menu had 
been published in the Bulletin the Sabbath be- 
fore. Everybody knew what was coming. The 
women in that particular “Circle of Service” 
had their work planned for the day. Two 
women were scheduled to peel the potatoes. 
Two other women were assigned the task of 
cooking the meat. Two others each Wednes- 
day were allotted the task of getting the dessert 
ready. Five or six were given the task of serv- 
ing at the Cafeteria tables. The dinner was 
dished on one plate and ready. One woman sold 
tickets at the far end of the Gymnasium, and a 
line formed at the windows for service. As this 
line passed in front of the windows the plates 
were ready without delay, and the people car- 
ried their full plates to any table which they 
liked. 


100 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


The pastors do not eat on Wednesday eve- 
ning. They go about from table to table greet- 
ing their members, sitting a moment at this table 
and that one. This gives a preacher an oppor- 
tunity of meeting and greeting his people in a 
way that is invaluable. He can eat his dinner 
after the evening is over just as he does on 
Sunday nights, if he is a wise Shepherd of his 
flock and really seriously desires to meet and 
talk with them about the Family Table. 

I have always said that this mid-week type 
of a meeting is simply following the Master’s 
favorite method of getting at people. He al- 
ways cured their ailments, fed their bodies and 
looked after their physical wants first and then 
preached to them and tended to their social and 
their spiritual needs. The immortal stories of 
the Loaves and Fishes, the story of the Pluck- 
ing of Corn, the Wedding Feast, even that beau- 
tiful Last Supper, illustrate what I mean. It is 
my belief that the way the Master worked with 
people is the best way even in this hurried day. 

The “Food, Faith and Fun” night is merely 
an adaptation of the Master’s method of deal- 
ing with people. 

It is a curious and a well-tried psychological 


“Food, Faith, and Fun” Features 101 


fact that business men find their prospective 
customers in a better frame of mind to talk 
business when they have been satisfied physi- 
cally. This has led toa development of the idea 
of doing business in modern America over the 
lunch-table. Some business man who ought to 
know says that one-half of the business of the 
United States is done over the lunch-table these 
days. 

People are the same about religion. A well- 
fed body is a body that is ready to sit down and 
enjoy spiritual things. Jesus knew that right 
well, and therefore he cared for their bodies, 
and fed their stomachs before he attempted to 
preach to them. 

In challenging my women to their part of this 
service I call their attention to the fact that they 
are carrying out the plan of Jesus when they 
feed men and women; that this was Christ’s 
plan, and that they are doing a practical and a 
vital thing when they are willing to provide the 
physical food in order that the preacher may 
provide the spiritual food for great crowds of 
people on Wednesday evenings. 

It is no small task for various groups of 
women to keep this work up through the years; 


102 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


this menial task of cooking food, washing dishes 
and serving people over greasy stoves, and 
smelly food. I always thrill to this story of the 
willingness of women to service. I look back 
upon five years of this kind of service in St. 
Marks with the deepest sense of admiration for 
several hundred women, many of whom had 
servants in their own homes, who were willing 
to cook and wash dishes for the Lord. 

In the church that I serve at the present time 
a chef does the work and gets what profits there 
are. However, I am frank to say that this takes 
away a vital touch of personal service which I 
miss greatly. I am also frank to say that the 
absence of women in the kitchen takes away 
that homey touch which I like. I am also forced 
to say, for the help of my preacher readers, that 
the presence of women in the kitchen gives a 
much better variety to the menu than a profes- 
sional chef. I advise, by all means, when it is 
possible, and the women of a church care 
enough about the spiritual life of a church to do 
this service work for the mid-week meeting, to 
have the women of the church do it. 

The profit on such a Wednesday evening 
supper, when it is sold for forty cents a supper, 


“Food, Faith, and Fun” Features 103 


and from four to five hundred attend regularly, 
is about twenty per cent, and this means a good 
deal of money for a Ladies’ Aid Society in a 
year. 

It is hard work for the women of a church 
but it is soul-satisfying service for the Master. 

The “Faith” part of the “Food, Faith and 
Fun Night” of course is the spiritual part of 
the evening. In St. Marks this part consisted 
of the five Prayer Meetings that ran every year 
for four years. These meetings were graded 
and I shall discuss the graded features of this 
plan in the next chapter, because I think that it 
is of enough importance to devote a chapter to. 
It is also an absolutely original contribution 
which I have had the honor to make to this new 
mid-week meeting in the life of the church of 
Christ. 

The “Fun,” or “The Frolic,” or the “Friend- 
ship” part of the evening can be organized in 
various ways. 

For several years in St. Marks we had mass 
play. The various members of our staff organ- 
ized the various groups into play. There were 
eight or ten rooms available for this play. 
There were Bowling Alleys which were always 


104 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


going in full blast and there was the big Gym 
Floor for Indoor Base Ball games, and indoor 
tennis. There were schedules and tournaments 
of Fats, Slims, Red-Heads, Black-Heads, Old 
Folks, Young Folks, and various other Class 
Groups. There were Spelling Bees, Big Sings 
and Games of every sort in this “Fun” period. 

During the last two years of my ministry in 
St. Marks we introduced a motion picture 
schedule for the “Play” period of the mid-week 
meeting. Jam frank to say that I do not believe 
that this succeeded as well as the mass play 
did. People do not get so close together in a 
picture play period as they do on a gym floor 
playing, yelling, laughing, and exercising. 
Since I have left St. Marks, Dr. Thomas and 
his staff have gone back to the old mass play 
periods, which is better. 

In the next chapter I shall not only discuss 
the Graded Idea as we introduced it into the 
mid-week meeting but I shall also discuss the 
Educational features that ought to have a place 
in every well-organized and serious-purposed 
Family or Church Night meeting. 


CHAPTER X 


The Graded Features and the 


Educational Program 


IT have not had the honor of contributing 
many absolutely new church methods. I do not 
claim to have done so. Most of the methods 
which I have advocated in my books are meth- 
ods which I have learned and adapted from 
other men. 

However I do claim originality, as much as 
any man can claim originality for anything, in 
the invention of the Revolving Cross, the Prayer 
Cross, the Dramatic Book Sermon, the Drama 
Sermon, the Symphonic Sermon and the Graded 
Prayer Meeting. 

We were forced to a Graded Prayer Meet- 
ing at St. Marks in Detroit. The Prayer Meet- 
ing plan which we had developed brought the 
entire family to the church supper at six o’clock. 
That meant that the children of all ages, as well 
as mother and father, were there to remain for 


the evening. 
105 


106 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


The only available room outside of the audi- 
torium was overflowing. I noticed that a third 
of that audience was made up of children. I 
knew that it was impossible for any man to give 
a sermon that would interest the fathers and 
mothers; and, at the same time, interest the 
children. 

Then I worked out a plan for two meetings. 
There was to be an adult meeting and a chil- 
dren’s meeting. After a few months it became 
necessary to grade these groups further and we 
developed four different grades: Adult, High 
School, Junior and Intermediate groups, follow- 
ing the same system of grading as the Sun- 
day School has had in use for years. 

Later we added the Primary Group, due to 
the fact that the younger fathers and mothers 
who didn’t want to miss that Family Night 
brought their wee babies. We often had, and 
they still have at St. Marks, thirty and forty 
babies. I wanted those babies taken care of so 
that at that Prayer Hour they would actually 
get some kind of a spiritual message, so we had 
story-telling teachers, who were experts in this 
line. 

This Graded Prayer Meeting has been going 


Features and Educational Program 107 


in St. Marks for four years and during the last 
year it has been going stronger than ever. 

One evening a Detroit clergyman came to 
speak before my adult Prayer Group and got 
lost on the way coming through the building. 
Finally, after stopping to see two of our meet- 
ings he at last reached the group which he had 
been invited to address. He later said that he 
“had to wade through three Prayer Meetings 
to get to the one that he was to speak before.” 

Each one of these five Graded Groups had a 
similar program for its service. The first part 
of that program consisted of the “Big Sing.” I 
have learned that singing is one thing that all 
ages have in common; and that children get as 
much joy out of lustily singing as the old folks. 
It was, therefore, a common and an exhilarat- 
ing experience to hear all over that great church 
the various Graded Groups singing the old 
hymns. 

There is a real spiritual education in the sing- 
ing of the old hymns of the church. The pres- 
ent generation knows too little of the old hymns. 
One of the richest spiritual heritages that the 
church and the home of yesterday handed down 
to us was a knowledge of the old hymns. The 


108 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


present jazz and ragtime craze has robbed the 
children of to-day of this heritage to a great ex- 
tent. Few children of to-day will ever hear the 
old hymns sung in their homes by their fathers 
and mothers as we did. 

One of the most beautiful memories some of 
us have is the memory of standing about an old- 
fashioned organ singing the old hymns with 
mother or father pumping away and leading 
us. That is a beautiful twilight memory which 
I shall carry on into Eternity with me. The 
children of this day and age do not hear the old 
hymns sung in their homes, and they are liter- 
ally bombarded by jazz everywhere else they 
go. Therefore, if the church does not teach 
them the old hymns, and teach them to sing 
these old hymns, they will lose this rich spiritual 
inheritance. 

Therefore a serious part of the educational 
program of these five Graded Prayer Meetings 
was and is to teach each group the beautiful and 
sacred old hymns. 

After this “Big Sing” in each Prayer Group 
the leader developed his meeting to suit him- 
self and the needs of his auditors. The Asso- 
ciate Pastor, Mr. Jack Meredith, took the High 


Features and Educational Program 109 


School Group. The third group, the Juniors, 
was handled by the Deaconess. The fourth 
group, or Intermediates, by two preachers’ 
wives; and the Primary Group by one of the 
women of the church who was and is an expert 
story-teller. 

The Sunday School worker is always asking 
why this “Church Night” should not be turned 
into an Educational Evening. I have hearty 
sympathy with that idea and feel that an edu- 
cational program ought to be adopted as a part 
of the midwinter schedule in this type of a 
Family Night. However, I think that it ought 
to be a part of the Prayer Hour and that it 
ought not to drag over into the “Fun” part of 
the evening. 

In case there is a group of teachers who 
would like to have a Normal Class in Religious 
Education, that class could be set aside as a 
separate group at the time that the other meet- 
ings are going on. Indeed, I believe that this 
would be a good thing to do. 

An expert teacher could be secured and this 
group turned over to that teacher as an addi- 
tional group in that Wednesday evening 
“Faith” period. If a complication arose, and 


110 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


the teachers did not care to leave the inspiration 
of the Adult Prayer Meeting, it could be ar- 
ranged to have this Normal Class for Sunday 
School teachers and parents at the hour running 
from 8 to 9, while the recreational program was 
going on in another part of the church. The 
two would not interfere in the least. 

This grading of the Prayer Meeting gives it 
a unique appeal to the various groups which are 
reached. Children like to speak of “Our Prayer 
Meeting.” ‘They have a sense of pride in their 
own group just as a Junior Church takes pride 
initsgroup. Wecalled the High School Prayer 
Meeting “The High School Club.” However, 
it was a Prayer Meeting in the truest sense of 
that word. Giving that group the name that we 
gave it, instead of calling it a Prayer Meeting, 
took away some of the atmosphere of the old- 
time Prayer Meeting. It made the High School 
group less timid about attending. There were 
often as many as 150 in this High School Club 
Prayer Hour. 

In the next chapter I shall discuss another 
essential feature of this mid-week meeting; that 
of advertising. I am convinced that the atti- 
tude on the part of the preacher which will as- 


Features and Educational Program 111 


sure the success of this mid-week meeting will 
be an attitude which makes the church at large 
feel that the preacher himself considers this the 
most important meeting in the church. They 
will not feel that the preacher considers this in 
that light if he advertises the Sunday services 
and does not advertise the mid-week service. 
Therefore it is highly important that this mid- 
week meeting gets its full share of publicity 
from some source if it is to be the type of a 
meeting that it ought to be. 


CHAPTER XI 


Advertising This Remade Mid- 
Week Meeting 


The church must feel that you the preacher 
consider this a very important hour. 

They will look upon it as important to the 
exact degree that you the preacher give it em- 
phasis in a new way. 

The old way used to be for the preacher to 
say on Sunday morning: “We will have the 
usual mid-week meeting next Wednesday at 
seven-thirty. I hope that a large number of 
people will find it possible to attend this meet- 
ing.” 

That was the end of the publicity that that 
poor mid-week meeting received. That was all 
the attention it got. Consequently the people 
of the average church did not take that meeting 
very seriously. 


In the first place this mid-week meeting 
112 


Advertising Mid-Week Meeting 113 


must get a lot of attention in the Church Bulle- 
tin. I have just looked over the church bulletins 
in two of my churches for six years and I find 
that my Wednesday night meeting has an aver- 
age of five separate paragraphs per Bulletin de- 
voted to it. I quote from my most recent Bulle- 
tins to show the various ways one may approach 
this matter of publicity for the Prayer Hour 
through the Bulletin: 


(1) 

“DID YOU GET YOUR SOUVENIR 
Bulletin and Booklet of Lincoln last Wednesday 
evening? It was distributed to those who at- 
tended the Sanctuary Service. It had in it an 
original Lincoln Poem and Hymn by the Pas- 
tor, the outline of an address to be given before 
the De Molay Boys at the Tomb of Lincoln in 
Springfield. Five hundred were set aside for 


our Prayer Meeting and they were gone in no 
time.” 


(2) 


“YOUR SANCTUARY SERVICE is at- 
tracting attention all through the church world! 
Has it attracted your attention as yet? Last 


114 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


Wednesday we had several visiting clergymen. 
They were astonished at the friendly warmth of 
our meeting. The George H. Doran Co., pub- 
lishers, of New York City, have asked your 
preacher to write a book called ‘REMAKING 
THE MID-WEEK PRAYER MEETING,’ 
Have you visited this Sanctuary Service? Itis 
unique, friendly, informal, spiritual, and help- 
ful!’ 


(3) 


“THIS . Is A‘, YOUNG) (PE@OE aa 
CHURCH! That is the hope and the goal of 
the present administration. We hope that the 
various departments and classes in the Sunday 
School will follow the lead of several groups 
and meet with us for supper on Wednesday 
evenings and then attend our mid-week service. 
It is a pleasant hour to spend together. Seven 
or eight members of the Criterion Class knelt 
at the church altars last Sunday. The church 
services on Sunday and the Sanctuary Service 
on Wednesday evening are planned with the 
young people in mind and all of these services 
are rapidly filling up with Youth. We are 
happy for this spirit and this tendency.” 


Advertising Mid-Week Meeting 115 | 


(4) 


“MR. CLARK, WHO IS THE HEAD of 
the campaign for a larger Brotherhood Class, 
said: ‘I like the way the people hang around the 
auditorium on Wednesday evenings and visit. 
That is the most hopeful sign I see about thé 
church.’ The preachers feel that way about it 
also.” 


(5) 


“A NEW SERIES OF TALKS will start 
soon in the Sanctuary Service. See the themes 
on the Red Cards which will be issued to-day 
and sent out in the letters.” 


I selected these five quotations—all different 
—about our mid-week meeting from the cur- 
rent issue of our Church Bulletin. This Bulle- 
tin was not purposely filled up to provide this 
illustration. Any preacher who cares to can 
read any Bulletin issued in any of my churches 
and he will find an average of five mentions 
made of the coming “mid-week service” with 
as much variety as I can put into that type of 
publicity. 


116 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


If the preacher advertises in a town or a city 
newspaper he must include in that Saturday 
space a prominent reference to his mid-week 
meeting. This places that meeting on an equal 
footing with the Sunday services. 

IT see to it that in every Saturday church ad 
the Sanctuary Service is given a prominent 
place and attention that makes it stand out. I 
get the best of results from this system. 

In addition to this I advocate the buying of 
white space in the newspapers of Wednesday 
morning to advertise that Wednesday evening 
meeting. I would do this particularly if I were 
in a small town which had a “Daily.” The very 
uniqueness of advertising the Wednesday eve- 
ning service gives the town, the church, and the 
city a thrill. It is unusual and he who does the 
unusual appeals to humanity. 

This space may seem to cost so much that a 
preacher does not dare to do it, even in a small 
town, but my experience has been that the 
preacher who advertises attracts enough addi- 
tional people to his services to make that ad pay 
for itself and add additional funds to the church 
treasury. 

Advertising always pays its own way if the 


Advertising Mid-Week Meeting 117 


preacher dares to break loose from ancient tra- 
ditions and do the advertising. 

The third way of advertising is to send out a 
letter to the church on Monday morning, care- 
fully prepared, telling the entire church mem- 
bership about that Wednesday evening meeting. 
If the letter is sent out on Tuesday morning it 
will reach most of the people on Wednesday 
morning and they will have a fresh reminder of 
that Wednesday evening meeting. I believe 
that this is one of the most effective forms of 
publicity for the Wednesday evening meeting. 
It works miracles with us in Linwood Boulevard 
Methodist church and I commend the system 
most highly to all preachers. 

The Kansas City Star recently made careful 
investigations of such business organizations as 
Beauty Shops and institutions which made their 
only advertising appeal to women in the Sunday 
paper. This was the system when Beauty Shops 
first came into existence. But a few of the wise 
managers of these Beauty Shops learned that 
the long haul from Sunday to Sunday needed 
something in between to call the attention of the 
city to these business institutions. So they 
started to advertising on Wednesday as well 


118 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


ason Sunday. Business picked up instantly and 
now the average Beauty Shop advertises every 
day. 

This paper makes the appeal to preachers 
which [I heartily endorse: that the distance in 
time from Sunday to Sunday needs bridging 
over. The spirit lags between Sunday and Sun- 
day. That mid-week meeting is important to 
the spiritual welfare of people. The long drag 
of seven days is too much without spiritual re- 
freshment in between along the way. The 
Wednesday night meeting gives this oasis in 
the spiritual desert of the week. 

But if it is worth conducting at all it is worth 
doing to the utmost of one’s ability. If it is 
worth while for two or three, or ten or fifteen 
people, it is worth while for two or three hun- 
dred; or for a thousand or fifteen hundred peo- 
ple. 

If it is worth while for fifteen hundred, then 
the whole city ought to know about it; ought 
to be told about it in the most direct way possi- 
ble and that is by a paid ad in the Wednesday 
morning paper each week. 

This system is absolutely guaranteed to do 
_ two things: To pay for itself if the preacher 


Advertising Mid-Week Meeting 119 


will have the nerve to stick to it for six months; 
and second, it will fill the church full of people 
for that mid-week service. 

I have copied from several of my newspaper 
ads the following references to our Sanctuary 
Service: 


(1) 


THE GREAT SANCTUARY SERVICE! . 

WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT LINWOOD 
BOULEVARD! 

From 7:30 to 8:30 witha “Billy Sunday Big 
Sing”; that popular “Gossip Period,’ and the 
crowd of a THOUSAND FOR PRAYER 
MEETING.” 

(2) 

A MID-WEEK MEETING THAT WILL 
REMAKE YOUR LIFE! 

Not the old-fashioned “Prayer Meeting,” but 
something new! 

A Meeting that attracts a thousand people in 
mid-week—why? Why? 

“There’s a REAL Reason” for this unusual 
phenomenon in church circles! 

LINWOOD BOULEVARD METHOD- 
IST CHURCH. 


120 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


(3) 


WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT? WHY DO 
THEY GO TO CHURCH WEDNESDAY? 

ANSWER: “BECAUSE THERE, I5 
SOMETHING DIFFERENT, UNIQUE, 
HELPFUL! THAT JS WHY  YOUssea 
THE CROWDS POURING INTO LIN- 
WOOD!’ 


(4) 


“THE. CHURCH WITH THE: GRGse 
THE CHIMES AND THE CROWDS!” 

LINWOOD BOULEVARD METHOD- 
IST—WITH THE GREAT MID-WEEK 
SERVICE! 


(5) 


“THE LARGEST MID-WEEK PRAYER 
SERVICE IN AMERICA! AT LINWOOD 
BOULEVARD METHODIST. ONE 
THOUSAND AVERAGE!” 

I could fill these pages up with copies of these 
ads which I used for the mid-week service, but 
these few will suffice to illustrate what I mean 
by giving this Sanctuary Service publicity at- 
tention. 


Advertising Mid-Week Meeting 121 


If nobody was impressed with this advertis- 
ing except your own church people the full ob- 
ject of the advertising would be accomplished. 
In fact, as I have said repeatedly heretofore in 
this book, I feel that the mid-week service ought 
to remain essentially a Family Meeting. Then 
why the advertising? 

Because the quickest way to gain the respect 
of your own church people for this meeting is 
for them to see it advertised in the papers. This 
will make your own church and your own con- 
stituency know that you yourself consider this 
meeting a very important matter. 

The last chapter of this book, which I have 
purposely kept down to the minimum of space, 
will deal with the heart and soul of the reason 
for the existence of this type of a mid-week 
meeting. 

The editor of a certain prominent weekly 
magazine which is not a church magazine asked 
me to write an article about my Prayer Meeting 
on the general theme, “(How I Satisfy a Human 
Need in My Prayer Meeting.” J have written 
that article. I was greatly pleased that a Prayer 
Meeting in a mid-western city had attracted the 
attention of an eastern magazine editor so that 


122 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


he felt it worth while to devote several pages of 
his publication to a strictly church institution, 

I am not going to duplicate that article in the 
last chapter of this book, but I am going to give 
the philosophy which must be back of this mid- 
week meeting and this mid-weekly effort to 
make this meeting one of the most important 
meetings of the church. 

I have left this chapter to the last of the 
book because it is like that famous phrase from 
the New Testament: “And the greatest of these 
is Love!” 

So I might say that I consider the greatest 
of all church meetings the mid-week meeting. 
So I might say that I consider the “greatest of 
these” chapters in this book is the one which is 
to come. 


CHAPTER XII 


Meeting a Real Need with the 
Mid-Week Service 


I have mentioned many methods in this book. 

I have also set forth the machinery which will 
make such a meeting successful. But I have, 
finally, to say that the meeting will not be a suc- 
cess unless it meets a spiritual need of your 
church, 

I am not saying that because it is the usual 
thing to say in such a book but because it is the 
truth. By the test of years I have learned that 
a mid-week meeting will not survive unless it 
meets a spiritual need of the community. 

In order to meet that spiritual need of your 
community the first duty that devolves upon an 
alert preacher is that of the most careful prep- 
aration for this mid-week meeting. He must 
take infinite patience and care about the pub- 
licity, as I have tried to show. He must also 


take just as great care with his preliminary “set- 
123 


124 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


ting up” of the program for this meeting. 
Nothing must be left to chance in the mechan- 
ical preparation for this hour. Every minute 
must be carefully scheduled. 

I put as much care in on the selection of 
hymns as 1 doon my sermon. I try to make the 
hymns not only a unit in themselves in the meet- 
ing, but I try to make them lead up to the mes- 
sage of the sermon. 

To that end, on one evening I will select all 
of the hymns of the meeting. Let us say they 
are all childhood hymns. I mean by that, hymns 
which are really written for children. It is 
curious how grown-ups like to sing these child- 
hood hymns now and then. Why? Because it 
gets them back into the psychology of childhood 
and because it brings back blessed memories of 
childhood days: Home, the old church, the old 
ways; all of which are sweet to think about. 

All well-edited hymn books have a section of 
these Hymns of Childhood, but usually they are 
only sung in meetings for children. But I will 
guarantee to any preacher that he will have the 
surprise of his life some Wednesday evening if 
he will get his grown-ups to singing these 
hymns. 


Meeting a Real Need 125 


Take that beautiful hymn, “I Would Be a 
Little Sunbeam,” or, “When He Cometh,” and 
watch the hearts of your adults melt into a 
smile and then into tears as they sing: 


“When He cometh, when He cometh 
To make up His jewels, 
All His jewels, precious jewels, 
His loved and His own. 


CHORUS: 

“Like the stars of the morning 
His bright crown adorning 
They shall shine in their beauty 
Bright gems for His crown.” 


Or take such a hymn as “I Think When I 
Read That Sweet Story” and watch the hard 
exteriors of your grown-ups break down in 


singing the beautiful, memory-laden lines such 
as: 


“T think when I read that sweet story of old, 
When Jesus was here among men, 
How He called little children as lambs to His 
fold, 


I should like to have been with them then. 


126 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


“T wish that His hands has been placed on my 
head, 
That His arm had been thrown around me, 
And that I might have seen His kind look when 
He said, 
‘Let the little ones come unto Me.’ 


“Vet still to His footstool in prayer I may go, 
And ask for a share in His love; 
And if I now earnestly seek Him below 
I shall see Him and hear Him above.” 


It seems almost ludicrous but “I'll Be a Sun- 
beam for Jesus” is a favorite with adults when 
it is clearly understood that everybody is sing- 
ing these old childhood hymns at the same time, 
just as a unique spiritual adventure. It takes 
them back to childhood and anything which does 
that is helpful spiritually. Jesus understood that 
when he took a little child, put it in their midst 
and said, “Of such is my Kingdom,” and, when 
He told His disciples that if they desired to in- 
herit Eternal life they must become as little chil- 
dren. You can quote this beautiful scene in the 
introduction of this evening of the “Hymns of 
Childhood” and you will find that your congre- 


Meeting a Real Need 127 


gation will enter into such an unusual singing 
hour with enthusiasm; and that they will come 
forth from it witha profound spiritual blessing. 
I have never known it to fail. 

On another evening you can select ‘““Hymns 
About Christ.’ The audience soon detects the 
fact that you have made careful preparation for 
this service when they notice that even the 
hymns have been selected with forethought and 
care. 

One evening I selected “Main Street 
Hymns.” I happened to have Mr. Sinclair 
Lewis as my guest that evening. I talked on 
the theme, ‘“Homesick for ‘Main Street.’” I 
used the Symphonic Theme from Joyce Kilmer: 


“T never knew a vagabond who really liked to 
roam 
All up and down the streets of the world and 
never have a home.”’ 


I used the story of the Prodigal Son for my 
Scripture lesson; that boy who was homesick 
for “Main Street.” I selected such hymns as: 
“The Old Rugged Cross,” “ ‘Whosoever’ Means 
Me,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” “When We All 


128 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


Get to Heaven,” “There'll Be No Dark Val- 
ley,” “Lead Me, Savior,” “The Church in the 
Wildwood,” and many others which suggest 
home. It made a beautifully impressive eve- 
ning. 

Some evenings I select Hymns About Nature. 
In fact, the entire month of May and June it is 
beautiful to feature these Nature Hymns. It 
will be surprising to the average preacher how 
much the hymn writers have used the symbolism 
of Nature to teach spiritual truths. When the 
warm weather comes, and the world is beautiful 
without, people like to sing these hymns of the 
out-of-doors. They are varied and many: 


“Abide with Me” 

“Beautiful River” 

“Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd” 
“Down in the Valley” 

“Encamped upon the Hills of Light” 
“From over Hill and Plain” 

“He Hideth My Soul” 

“His Mercy Flows” 

“Rock of Ages” 

“I Come to the Garden Alone” 
“There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” 


Meeting a Real Need 129 


“Tn the Rifted Rock I’m Resting”’ 

“T’ve Reached the Land of Corn and Wine” 
“Lead, Kindly Light” 

“There Shall Be Showers of Blessings” 
“There'll Be No Dark Valley” 


Then you can select a group of “Hymns 
About the Church,” or a group under the title 
of “Hymns of Youth,” “Hymns of Loyalty,” 
“Hymns of Hope,” “Hymns of Penitence,”’ 
“Prayer Hymns,” etc. You do not need 
to follow the divisions which are set forth in 
the indexed hymn books but make your own 
divisions to fit your thought and your need. If 
the day has been gloomy and your audience 
is depressed sing ‘““Hymns of Dawn and Sun- 
shine.” If it is cold and wintry and the winter 
has been long and the people are tired of it sing 
“Hymns of Springtime and the Promised 
Land.” If something has happened in your 
town that week with which it is possible to link 
up your “Big Sing” by all means do it. A 
spiritual story may be told in the singing of the 
hymns, 

Another way to meet a spiritual need is to 
select most carefully one or two literary gems 


130 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


of poetry to read or to have read in the Prayer 
Hour. The best books I know to have at hand 
for that purpose are “Forty Thousand Quota- 
tions,” “One Hundred and One Famous 
Poems,” “The World’s Great Religious 
Poetry,” “The Golden Treasury of Songs and 
Lyrics,” “High Tide,” “It Can Be Done,” “The 
Book of Mother Verse” and “Famous Single 
Poems.” There are many others but these are 
the best for ministers. I use them constantly. 
This literary gem, brief and well-read, will do 
much to brighten up this mid-week meeting and 
it will answer a spiritual need in many souls. 

At every meeting I try to read at least one 
prayer from some great book of prayers. 
There are many such. I use Bishop Quayle’s 
“Climb to God’ and “The Throne of Grace” 
most of the time because they are the most 
human and the most spiritual prayers I find 
in book form. Bishop Thierkield has also made 
a strong editorial selection of prayers in his 
little “Book of Prayers.” One prayer from a 
great soul like Bishop Quayle will remake the 
spiritual atmosphere of a meeting. Why not? 
Why not have these great men in your meet- 


Meeting a Real Need Tony 


ing in the only way we can have them now? 
In most of our churches it is not possible to 
bring the great of the earth because they are 
engaged elsewhere or are in Heaven. But it 
is possible to have the thoughts of their hearts 
and that isa tremendous thing. I often wonder 
why so many of us neglect this great asset to 
our Prayer Hour Meetings. I have never tried 
anything that has added so much to the spirit- 
ual atmosphere of such a meeting. 

I always try to keep in mind, when I am 
preparing my sermon for the mid-week meet- 
ing, the business man, the mother, the father, 
the young man or woman, out there in the 
world, buffeted about by competitive business 
methods, weary of struggle, sometimes dis- 
gusted with the mad race for orders, sales, 
accounts, production, transportation. I think 
of them as grievously needing, somewhere be- 
tween Sundays, a spiritual refreshment. I think 
of them as needing a drink out of the Well of 
Everlasting Life. I think of them as needing 
a lift, a spiritual impetus. I think of that 
crowd which will attend my Sanctuary Service 
as a crowd of people who have had some kind 


132 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


of disappointment, some kind of sorrow, some 
kind of disillusionment. I know that they have. 
Life offers so much of that! 

I try to remember that the Noonday- 
Lunch-Club does not give them any spiritual 
food, any uplift for their souls. There is so- 
cial fellowship and laughter and singing, but 
not spiritual food. There is no place in this 
modern life which offers the lonely, weary man 
spiritual refreshment except the Church of 
God, and if it fails that is a great tragedy for 
humanity. 

If this spiritual hunger which is on all souls 
is met; if the business man of any community 
finds out that, at a certain Prayer Hour, that 
hunger in his soul is satisfied, that need is 
met; that particular Sanctuary Service will not 
have any trouble in getting people to attend its 
gatherings. Folk will flock to that service be- 
cause they are hungry in their hearts and there 
is no other place in all the modern life they live . 
which even approximates giving them spiritual 
satisfaction. 

It is also up to the church to satisfy the so- 
cial need of those who attend this mid-week 
meeting. This can be done by a gathering, such 


Meeting a Real Need 133 


as I have indicated elsewhere in this book, fol- 
lowing the Prayer Hour. People used to like 
the old-time Singing School. That institution 
in our American life satisfied two things: It 
satisfied their desire to sing, and it satisfied 
the social need. That was why the old-time 
Singing Schools were so universally popular. 

The church in this Wednesday evening meet- 
ing has an opportunity, if it will seize this 
chance, to satisfy both of these needs of the 
human heart. 

I say quite frankly to my Sunday congrega- 
tions that I consider the Wednesday evening 
Prayer Meeting as the most important meet- 
ing of the week in the entire church schedule. 
I put it far above either the Sunday morning 
or the Sunday evening church service in impor- 
tance to the individual member and to the 
church at large. 

The old-time preacher used to say that the 
“Prayer Meeting is the spiritual barometer of 
the church.” He was right to a certain extent. 
To-day that is even more true than it was then. 
To-day that Wednesday night meeting is abso- 
lutely the only Family Gathering we have in 
American life. Our home-life is shattered. 


. 


134 Building Up the Mid-Week Service 


Our church services are big, popular, crowded 
gatherings of the entire city. We do not get 
that personal contact with each other; that 
spirit of communion, that fraternal touch which 
the church of Christ had in its early beginnings ; 
which was and is the very genius of the church. 
The church that loses this fraternal, family 
touch loses its very heartbeat. The Church 
Night, or the Family Night, the “Food, Faith 
and Fellowship Night,” or “The Sanctuary 
Service,” will restore this in all of its splendid, 
pristine, spiritual glory if it is worked carefully 
and prayerfully. 

I have sent forth this book with the hope 
that it may help even a little to a restoration of 
the mid-week meeting, in a different way; a 
way to fit the new day; and with the hope that 
it may help the preacher in a practical fashion 
to solve this ever-present problem. 


THE END 


ake 
js? 
12 


a, 
ee 


ae 


ZA 


Aw 


‘ 

4 5 
in 6 
oe 


ia 
ay 
-_ 


® Zz on 4 
¥, 4 Sons f 
rhe ” a ‘BS 











DATE DUE 


Cr) 
Ca) 
a 


< 
. 
> 
3 
o 
ws 
- 
= 
« 
a 
Q 
« 
9° 
4 
>» 
< 
° 


: ne 


; 


t 
a 











BV285 .S85 
Building up the mid—week service, 


rinceton Theological Seminar 


ary—Speer Library 


1 1012 00014 6722 





